Fito is a well-established app that helps family and friends track their health. The app allows users within a group (a family or group of friends) to see how others are doing regarding health and fitness. The company would like to integrate new messaging features into the app to create sustained engagement.
The Problem
On average, user engagement is heavy for the first three weeks, then it drops off, and soon after, users delete the app.
The Solution
We want to integrate new messaging features that allow users to message at any point throughout the experience to sustain engagement and increase repeat usage. These include: an auto-feed alert that is based on the user’s search preference; a chat group that allows the user to exchange information freely; a promo share function for the user to save on fitness classes and training; a share result function after each workout summary.
My Role
I worked on market research, user research, and evaluation during all the iterations of the product’s development.
Tools
Figma, Google doc, pen, and paper
The Process
Competitors’ Analysis
After understanding the problem and product direction from the PM, we completed a competitor analysis of three apps (Nike Run Club, Productive, Map My Run) to gain an in-depth understanding of similar products on the market and see where our opportunity landed with actionable items.
Things We Love
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Clear instruction
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Leaderboards and badges make it fun
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Status show in several places
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Free to leave the challenge anytime without interrupting others participants
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Vibrant color and delightful visuals
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Predefined categories and lists for easier choice making
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Steps to create fun commitments (make a bet and sign on it)
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Chance to make edits/pause anytime
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The community is identical to social media posts and easy to understand
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Audio assistant for running is a big help
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Can save/share/or discard a workout record
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Showing progress/milestone on the leaderboard
Things Can Be Better
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Cannot undo sharing
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Can only invite friends by sharing the link
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Limited editing options for challenge
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Go through unnecessary steps to make edits for specific action
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Repeating habits fall into different categories and cause some cognitive load
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Served as a reminder without providing additional sources that facilitate the habit
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Left/right swipe to complete or skip is not obvious
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No way to see how other users' progress
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No label on the bottom navigation, hard to understand the 2nd icon
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Confusing in some of the wording
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Only 3 challenges are available
Actionable Items
to Consider
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Giving a clear indication of every step/action user has made
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Gamification options (rewards/badges, leaderboard)
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Delightful visual element/animation
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Allow user to change their mind after creating something
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Create ease to sharing the result right after a workout
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Able to invite friends to join
Project Plan and Research
We built a two-week project plan to guide us in completing different phases and ensuring critical deliverables were on time.
To save time on the research/discovery phases, we did two parts of secondary research. The first part is gathering online resources and extracting critical points about fitness, user goals, challenges, and possible solution. The second part is reading fitness app reviews from the app store to identify user pain points and opportunities.
Fitness app reviews
from app store
Key Learnings
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Finding an accountable person will help users stick to their fitness activities
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Users don’t want to check their phones often while they workout
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Gamification can create initial excitement but doesn’t sustain users’ motivation in a long term
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Users are likely to drop out if it takes extra effort (data entries, constant login, and checks)
We learned that "Finding an accountable person" will help people stick to their fitness activities. This finding validates the idea of our solution for bringing in new messaging features that can create a positive influence and substantial connection between family and friends. For us, it can help sustain engagement and increase repeat usage for our product.
Design, Validate, and Repeat
Since we were integrating new features into the product, we ensured they were consistent with the current design. Beginning with the user flows and sketching, we identify the touchpoints for building the message features.
User Flow Chart
Low-Fidelity Screens
To validate the design, and I interviewed five users to test the low-fidelity wireframes. Based on user feedback, we don’t see significant issues with the message features we built. Users were able to access and share info with others smoothly. During the usability testing, we identified a few issues that are not associated with new features, but we believe fixing these minor issues along the way is beneficial.
First Round of Testing
Findings
1
2
3
Only one user (out of five) figured out how to discover more detail about a class due to two reasons. One is the prototype is for mobile, but actual testing takes place on a desktop or laptop. The other reason is it needs to be more hints for users to know it can be swapped up/or dragged up.
Four users pointed out some minor design issues. Font weight, corner radius, and icon strokes are inconsistent. Labels are not intuitive to understand
Personal-guided class (ie, Yogo), the class map is overwhelming and may scare the beginning user.
Proposed Solutions
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Make it rounded corners
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Add a small bar/arrow to indicate it can be moved up
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Ensure the icon strokes, font weight, and corner radius are consistent
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Revise the labels to make them easy to understand
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Add confirmation after the user has shared an invite message to a group
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Rethink the matrix that associate with a different type of exercise and what can be recorded or not
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Make it rounded corners
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Add a small bar/arrow to indicate it can be moved up
Visual Design
Jumping into the iteration, we utilized UI kits to speed up the process. We want to combine a warm color that feels inviting, exciting, and energizing with a color that feels steady and calm.
UI Style Guide
High-Fidelity Screens
We are excited to see the refined design get tested. I interviewed five different users to test the high-fidelity wireframes. We received positive feedback for the iterations we made. All problems we found during our first usability tests were greatly improved. The finding that iPhone users need a different login requires further investigation into the iOS and Android users' distribution of the app. After evaluating the findings, we decided to move on without major design changes.
Second Round of Testing
The Final Design
What did I learn?
Use the project plan as a guide, and remain flexible
This project put a great test for me. I planned the project to complete in two weeks, but it lasted longer than I expected. Several events at work and with family added extra mental pressure. Despite some pauses, the project plan served as a good guide and I am happy that I pushed through the challenges and finished this project.
Using a chart/metrics to identify the problem areas quickly
I used a chart/metrics for this project and found it very helpful to identify the problem quickly. User feedback and insights can be overwhelming and can take hours to process. Using a chart/metrics for gathering user feedback and observations improves my working process. I will likely reuse this method for my next project.