U-Fit

PROJECT
  • U-Fit
DURATION
  • 2018.02-2018.06
TOOLS
  • Adobe XD
ROLE
  • User Research
  • Conceptual Analysis
  • Wireframing
  • Prototyping
  • UX Evaluation

Overview

About U-Fit

U-Fit is a fitness/gaming APP that encourages users to exercise and maintain a physically active lifestyle.Through the research, it was discovered that the primary source of motivation for working out comes from having a friend beside them to provide encouragements and friendly competitions.

What I did

In designing the application, I decided to emulate this design process shown below:

  • Conducted research into factors of why targeting users desire to do exercise.
  • Analyzed data gained through the survey and interviews to understand users' needs, values and motivation for exercising.
  • With this knowledge, created and iterated a mobile application that encourage users to do more exercise and keep fit.

Research

User Interview

To start off, I need to find out what people’s attitude towards exercise is. I conducted interviews to understand what motivates them to exercise, what demotivates them and why they struggle with it.

Analysis

According to research, 38% of women and 24% of men would like to manage their weight. Most of them believe that a better visual representation of their future body shape might positively motivate them to adopt healthier behavior.

44% of female students and 15% of male students who were trying to lose weight.

But 18% of them do not do exercise during their week.

Doing exercise (51%) is the most welcomed weight control method, followed by skipping meals (49%) and taking diet pills (5%).

50% people have gym membership, but they will quickly give up.

59% people already have fitness APP, but only 28% use it.

Insights

After research, I found that one of the important motivations for doing physical exercises comes from weight management. People are willing to make more efforts in order to obtain a desirable appearance.  However, the frequency of exercising is likely reduced. The reason is losing weight through exercising takes a long period of time and loss of seeing results. Also, there are other external factors to take into consideration that will influence their routine.

“I had given up during the first week because despite all my effort of exercising, my weight did not change drastically.”

“I felt demotivated since my friend no longer took part in exercising with me. Also, I am not so confident to talk with others actively.”

“I also had too much work which  have taken some of the focus away from exercising. When I was so tired, I was less willing to do so.”

“12% of gym members sign up in January, but most people quit or stop going within 24 weeks.”

“The advertising of the gym is very attractive at the beginning. However with time, it becomes repetitive and boring.”

“It was hard to apply my abilities without supervision because staff didn't communicate with me as frequently as they did the first week.”

Target Audience

I identified the primary users as people who want to do physical exercise. The secondary users are game lovers who are passionate about social participations.

Gym Goer

“If I look at another’s exercise logs with higher performance, it will inspire my to do the same.”

Users need competition/social support to give them mutual incentive to keep going.

Casual Gamer

“I prefer to play games rather than exercise. I would like to do fitness more fun. "

Users need to exercise a game in itself and get rewards in order to meet their goals.

The Gregarious

“I feel more comfortable having friends come work out with me.”

Users need to have a persistent workout partner in order to encourages them exercise.

Personas

IDEATE

Affinity Diagram

After understanding the pain points of losing the drive to workout, I explored which strategies encourage users to keep exercising. I created the Affinity Diagram to prioritize their motivation based on its importance to the user.

UX Goals

Then, I have identified the following UX goals:

  • “I want to know about my healthy data and compare it with history.”
  • "I want to have a strong digital Avatar and my Avatar information."
  • "I want to have a tutorial video. For video, each step is clear to understand. After watching the video, I know how to this exercise."
  • "I want to choose my own exercise tasks so that I can customize my workouts to suit my routine."
  • "I want notifications that remind me to exercise and tell me what my friends are up to."
  • "I want more opportunities to make friends and to share my results with the rest of the world."

User Journey Map

design

Storyboard

1. Dashboard
2. History
3. Workout
4. Exercise
5. Avater
6. Program
7. Intro
8. Friends
9. Battle

Wireframe

Dashboard
  • Users can view their workout statistics.
  • Aims to help users to see that workout elicits positive effects, so that they are more willing to insist on taking exercise, then form a good habit.
Workout
  • Provides multiple workout activities. It is sorted by difficulty, body parts and type of exercise.
  • Each workout offers basic information and what stats it would increase for Avatar so as to motivate users to do exercise.
Avatar
  • Users are able to create and customize their own digital pet (Avatar).
  • To strengthen an Avatar and progress further in-game, users are encourage to perform exercise.
Program
  • Suggest exercises for the user to complete by program video.
Friends
  • Support communication with users and their friends

Iteration

User Test

Based on the storyboard and my understanding of the core functions of the U-Fit app, I created a few scenarios with a series of tasks. The skeleton of testing process included observation tasks, questionnaire and interview.

  • Observing how effectively users perform a certain task and explore the prototype
  • Gauging the users understanding of functionalities or displayed pages
  • Gathering the user’s opinions on which features of the app they found most motivated (E.g. social, gaming, exercise)

Feedback

After user testing, I collected data and gathered feedback from participants. Several surprising insights were discovered.

“The way of dashboard display is a little bit hard to help me understand my body stats changes.”

“I wanted to see the changes of my body stats after workout and how experience I gain can affect my avatar‘s outlook.”

“More emphasis should be placed on socializing with my real-world friends, and more functionality that enables that should be included.”

“I had some trouble completing certain tasks because I couldn't understand what each button/ icon does. Make the function of buttons more unambiguous.”

“I suggest that adding more buttons so that a button only does one task.”

“While the Avatar /Battle feature of the app seems intriguing,  I need to see a more detailed prototype to make sure it is interesting enough to motivate me.”

Prototype

    Dashboard

    During the exercise, the system records users' status and Avatar gains exp according to the amount of exercises

    Workout

    Players' Avatar will have 3 different lever-up forms depending on types of workout.

        Avatar

        Display improvements the user is making each time they exercise.

        E.g. If the player completed more strength exercise, the Avatar would have stronger arms and muscles. Correspondingly, it attack will be higher. If the player did more aerobic or balanced exercise, the Avatar would have high speed and defense respectively.

        Program

        Program videos demonstrate users how to properly do an unfamiliar exercise.

            Friends

            The app also allows users to contact and play with friends, meet new people, or meet new people in their location and work out with them.

            Battle

            Users can use their own Avatar to compete against other's Avatars in the battle. It is a simple turn-based game. In order to strengthen an Avatar and progress further in-game, users are required to perform exercises. The Avatar’s attributes (strength, speed and defense) are determined by the number of different kinds of exercises you finished.

              • Strength: how many damages your Avatar can create. (Increased by strength exercise)
              • Speed: how many rounds our Avatar can run. (increased by aerobic exercise)
              • Defense: how many damages your Avatar can defense. (Raised by balanced exercise)