Fitness App: Booking Personal Coaches with Ease

Tools used

Process

Empathize

Life is becoming increasingly busy, making time management more challenging than ever. The constant feelings of fatigue and stress often result in people losing motivation to exercise. Occasionally, working out becomes merely a temporary relief without specific plans or goals.

As someone who experiences these challenges firsthand, I understand how they can significantly hinder exercise routines. However, through exploration, I've gained a clearer understanding, clarifying and identifying the needs and obstacles of users.

Identifying the Research Subjects

The study focuses on three main groups: beginners (ages 18-25), regular exercisers (ages 26-40), and advanced exercisers (ages 41-55), with different health goals and exercise preferences.

Questions Sumary

Analysis and Evaluation

• Beginners feel a lack of specific guidance and struggle with workout planning.
• Regular exercisers desire more progress tracking features and community interaction.
• Advanced exercisers seek exercise variety and want flexibility in customizing their workout schedules.

After conducting User Studies, analyzing Pain Points and user needs helps identify the core issues to be addressed through the fitness application. Here are common Pain Points and user needs users often encounter:

Pain Points

User Needs

User Personas

Based on the results from the questionnaire, I have compiled a comprehensive empathy persona. Below, I summarize the user's personality traits to serve as a case study for the design process.

Journey map

Knowing who exactly I was designing for allowed me to ask myself how Advantage would fit into the lives of the users. I imagined ideal experiences and focused on how our personas think and behave to align content and features. This gave me a way to visualise what content would be useful and what were the possible opportunities to improve.

Define

Users aim to maintain a healthy lifestyle and improve their fitness through exercise, but they are facing several challenges when it comes to planning and achieving their workout goals independently. Specifically, the issues include:

• Lack of Personalized Guidance: Users find it difficult to identify and implement a workout plan tailored to their health goals, abilities, and personal preferences.
• Tracking Progress and Evaluating Effectiveness: Users struggle to track progress and evaluate the effectiveness of their workout plans, leaving them uncertain about whether they are making progress or need to adjust their plans.
• Sustaining Motivation: Users lack motivation and long-term commitment to exercise due to a lack of support and a sense of belonging to a community.

Target

The main goal of this fitness application project is defined to address the aforementioned challenges and comprehensively meet the health and physical needs of users. Specifically, the project aims for the following:

• Personalizing user experience: Developing an intelligent recommendation system using AI to provide personalized workout plans and dietary regimes based on each individual's health goals, physical condition, and preferences.
• Providing diverse and high-quality content: Building a large exercise library covering various disciplines from basic to advanced, instructed by professional trainers.
• Optimizing interaction with trainers: Integrating a convenient and easy-to-use trainer booking feature, allowing users to search, rate, and schedule individual or group workouts with their preferred trainers.
• Tracking and analyzing progress: Developing tools to monitor health and physical progress, assisting users in assessing workout effectiveness and adjusting plans accordingly.
• Optimizing and expanding: Developing the application for easy expansion in terms of features and compatibility with various devices and operating systems, to serve a large user base.

The project's goal is not only to develop an effective fitness application but also to aim at changing users' perceptions and exercise habits, helping them maintain a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

Ideate

In the Idea Generation phase for the fitness app case study, the goal is to come up with creative solutions to address the challenges identified in the Define phase. Below are some key ideas to solve user problems:

• Automated Personalized Workout Planning
• Comprehensive Progress Tracking Tool
• Integration with Wearable Tech
• Feedback and Adjustment of Workout Plans
• Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) Workouts
• Personal Achievement Tracker
• Sleep and Recovery Analysis
• Online Trainer Booking

Solution Selection

Based on the information provided above and the evaluation criteria, I will make detailed solution selections for the fitness app:

Automated Personalized Workout Planning:

• With high implementation capability thanks to AI and machine learning technology, it can provide guidance and tailored workout plans for each specific user.
• High impact on users, helping them feel supported and guided in a personalized manner, thereby enhancing motivation and workout effectiveness.
• Average development cost, requiring investment in technology and data but with the potential for long-term value creation and return on investment.

Online Trainer Booking:

• High implementation capability with an existing online booking system and network of trainers.
• Very high impact on users, providing a direct solution to the need for professional support and direct interaction with personal trainers
• Development costs can range from average to high, depending on infrastructure and partner relationships.

Based on the evaluation, both Automated Personalized Workout Planning and Online Trainer Booking are chosen for development based on their positive impact on user experience, high implementation capability, and long-term value they bring.

Both solutions meet the core needs of users, including providing personalized guidance, enhancing tracking and evaluation capabilities, and creating motivation through professional interaction. Implementing both solutions simultaneously will make the fitness app more outstanding and attractive, while effectively addressing challenges users face regarding motivation and professional guidance, as well as planning and tracking workout progress.

Competitive analysis

"App Home Workouts" shines in the home fitness market with its varied features and vibrant community, marking it as my closest competitor in this segment. However, it doesn't offer what my app does: personal trainer bookings. My app elevates the fitness experience by enabling personal trainer bookings and group workouts, boosting motivation and health tracking.

User Flows

After identifying the main scenario, I outlined the primary pathways that my users would follow when interacting with the feature to book coaches through the app, which also serves as one of the key features to drive profit in the business.

UI Design & High fidelity

View Comprehensive Design

Testing Overview

• Number of participants: 20 users
• Method: Remote testing via video call and screen sharing.
• Objective: Evaluate the ease of use, effectiveness, and user satisfaction with the personal trainer booking feature.

Key Feedback

Results Synthesis

The synthesis of results from the product development and testing process indicates that the online personal trainer booking feature has been positively received, but significant improvements are also needed to optimize the user experience. Through this process, the fitness app has not only improved in terms of functionality but also aims to build a positive and supportive exercise community. To continue succeeding and growing in the competitive market, the app needs to maintain its focus on listening to and understanding users, along with implementing flexible improvements based on feedback and collected data.

Impact on Users

• Enhanced Health and Well-being: Users experience physical and mental improvements through regular workouts with support from professional trainers, leading to enhanced health, stress reduction, and improved quality of life.
• Sustained Motivation and Commitment: The online personal trainer booking feature helps users maintain motivation and commitment to their personalized workout schedules, thanks to direct interaction and personalized guidance.
• Improved Fitness Knowledge: Users gain in-depth knowledge about exercises, nutrition, and post-workout recovery from experts, enabling them to exercise more effectively and safely.

Market Impact

• Elevated Service Standards: The product sets new standards for the fitness app market by integrating the feature of booking professional trainers, encouraging other competitors to enhance service quality and innovation.
• Encouragement of Innovation: Competitive impact drives innovation in the fitness app industry, from technological advancements to content and service development, aiming to provide added value to users.
• Expansion of Market Opportunities: The development and success of the product open opportunities for collaboration with gyms, health centers, and nutrition experts, creating a comprehensive fitness ecosystem.

Learned Lessons

During the development and deployment of the fitness application, many valuable lessons have been learned, not only in terms of technical aspects and product development but also in understanding and serving our users. Here are some key lessons:

User Understanding is Top Priority

• Listen to Users, user feedback is the most crucial factor in the product development process. Continuous user testing and surveys help us understand real needs and adjust the product accordingly.
• Needs-Driven Features, each feature must address a specific user need, not just because we can build it.

Flexibility and Adaptability

• Adapt to Change, markets and technologies are always evolving, requiring flexibility and readiness to adapt to avoid falling behind.
• Test and Iterate, the product development process is an iterative cycle of testing, learning from results, and improving.

Future Development Proposals

Based on the lessons learned, user feedback, and current market trends, here are some future development proposals for the fitness application:

The proposed future developments aim to not only enhance the user experience and expand the user base but also to strengthen the professionalism and diversity of the application. Through continued innovation and meeting user needs, the fitness application can maintain its leading position and contribute to promoting a healthier society.