Empower Your Power
mobile app case study designed during my Google UX Design Professional Certificate
Project overview
The Product:
”Empower Your Power - Train With Mike" is a specialized mobile app for a fitness trainer. Through the app, the user can book live or on zoom workouts with Mike (with the option of choosing the date, time, and workout type), can plug in their food intake and set a personal goal, keep track of a healthy diet, read articles about a healthy lifestyle, and receive notifications/motivation messages in helping them achieve their personal goal.
Project duration:
January 2022 - April 2022
My Role:
UX designer designing the app from concept to delivery
Responsabilities:
Competition research, conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs.
UNDERSTAND THE USER
Personas
User Research
Problem Statements
User journey Maps
UNDERSTAND
THE USER
User Research: Summary
I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users I’m designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified throughout the research was working adults who do not have the knowledge on how to improve their daily workout but are highly motivated in doing so.
Research also revealed the frustration of this user group in not finding a system in place that can help out with a structured workout but also knowledge on how to work out different body parts.
A secondary user group identified was hard-working adults with a busy schedule, that want to live a healthy lifestyle but do not have the motivation in starting to do so, nor the time to travel to the gym and work out with a personal trainer.
Research revealed the frustration and disappointment of this user group of not being able to find the motivation and stimuli in keeping the track of their food intake or finding time to go to the gym.
User Research: Pain Points
Knowledge
Working adults do not know how to structure their workouts and how to work out properly for different body parts
Time
Working adults have busy schedule and cannot find time for going to the gym and workout
Accessibility
Trainers’ platforms do not cover all the users’ needs: keeping track of food intake, offering motivation, and working out from anywhere in the world.
Persona Research - Understanding the target audiance
The data from my research showed that I had 2 main user segments:
- people who would like to do something about their health but because of busy work schedules are not considering this as a priority.
- people who are passionate about workouts and a healthy lifestyle and want to improve their knowledge and workout routines
"I just want to keep track of my basic health stats and improve my body conditions."
Tara
Age 27
Education Economics
Hometown New York, USA
Family Single
Occupation Sales Manager
Goals
●Have more energy throughout the day
●Increase body strength
●Live a healthy life
Frustrations
●Cannot keep the workout schedule
●Hard time keeping the track of healthy food
●Busy work schedule
●Cannot stay motivated
●Quick results
Tara is a 27 years old woman, living by herself in New York. Her busy schedule at work takes most of her time and even if she wants to live a healthier life and improve her health, she chooses work as a high priority. She is frustrated with not having enough time and motivation for herself. She starts working out but she drops it down fast.
"The gym is my life and fitness is one of my top priorities!"
Goals
●Improve workout quality and intensity over time with professional training.
●Learn more about body proper position when working out
Frustrations
●Properly workout his body parts
●Dedicated but unstructured workout
John is 36 years old, single living in Texas. He is the founder of an IT startup and before coffee in the morning, he chooses to have a 30 mins run in the neighborhood. His day ends with a 2 hours workout in the gym, no matter how tired he would feel. He wants to improve his working out program and be sure he is working his body parts and isometry in a proper way. He is very dedicated when is about working out daily.
John
Age 36
Education IT
Hometown Texas, USA
Family Single
Occupation Founder of an IT
Startup
User Research: User journey
Mapping John’s user journey revealed how important it would be for users to have access to the trustable information about living a healthy life and ways to improve mind and body condition through workout activities.
Digital Wireframes
Paper Wireframes
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Usability Studies
STARTING THE DESIGN
Storyboards
A storyboard is telling a story. It’s an illustrated telling of a scenario where the user’s experience in a user flow and helped me to empathize with the user.
In the storyboard, my persona is looking for an app/personal trainer that can satisfy his needs in getting better in his workouts. The close-up shows my user interacting with the app and completing the main user flow - getting in touch with the personal trainer and making an appointment.
Paper Wireframes
Taking the time to draft the iteration of each screen of the app ensured that elements that made it to digital wireframes will be well suited to address user pain points. For booking a meeting with the trainer I prioritized intuitive, quick, and easy access, without the mandatory option of logging in.
Storyboard - close-up
Digital Wireframes
Easy navigation for scheduling an appointment was the key users need in the design in addition to equipping the app to work with assistive technologies.
Easy access to navigation for making an appointment without needing to register/log in
An intuitive way for users to add their food intake to their daily food diary
The option for users to take notes about their daily food.
As the initial design phase continued, I made sure to provide users easy and intuitive access to the app’s screen and the option to take notes that help them achieve their goals.
The low fidelity prototype connected the primary user flow of scheduling an appointment with the trainer, so the prototype could be used in a usability study with users.
Usability Study: Findings
Round 1 findings
I conducted two unmoderated usability studies. Findings from the first study helped guide the designs from wireframes to mockups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mockups needed refining.
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Users want to make an appointment with the trainer without logging in.
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Users want an easier and more intuitive way to add their daily food to the diary
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Users want clear directions when the input of food
Round 2 findings
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Users want to be notified of error or interruptions in finishing tasks
-
More user-friendly approach when signing out.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Mockups
Accessibility
REFINING THE DESIGN
Mockups
Early designs allowed for some customization but after the usability studies, I created a user interaction more intuitive, and easy to navigate through, for example changing the separate input field for time with the selection of predefined values using a time picker, for a band better user experience.
The second usability study revealed frustration with the appointment flow. Before the usability study, it was not intuitive for the user what is missing when trying to confirm the appointment. The message of selection ”Live via Zoom” or “In-person” that is shown after the usability study gives more clarity in finishing the task and creates flow for the user.
Accessibility Consideration
Provide access to users who are vision-impaired through adding alternative text to images for screen readers
1
Used icons to help make navigation easier.
2
Used detailed steps when scheduling a workout to help users better understand the design
3
Used text to speech option when accessing the articles under ‘Nutrition’ for easy access to information
4
Next steps
Takeaways
Self-Reflection
GOING FORWARD
Takeaways
Impact
I finalized the structure and design of the app and I was able to create an interface that was friendly and dynamic. The app makes users feel like “Empower Your Power” really thinks about how to meet their needs.
One quote from peer feedback: “I think I would totally use this app to meet Mike and help me out with a personalized workout plan. I like lifting up weights but I want to do it better! "
What I Learned
While designing the app, I learned that the first ideas are only the beginning of the process. Usability studies and peer feedback are important processes that influenced each iteration of the app’s design.
Conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether the pain points users experienced have been effectively addressed.
Next Steps
1
Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of need.
2
Aside from higher fidelity, the second phase of this project would include streamlined user flows for paying for the workouts. I would also create an unmonitored usability study for the paying method user flows.
3
What I would do differently and what is my personal learning
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I certainly would pay more attention to user testing and the questions asked.
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I believe that there is room for improvement in the way the questions are formulated and should consider multiple user flow (if there are more).
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The first idea would most likely not be the final idea. Do not get attached to the first idea.
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Listen to users. You might think that you know what the users need only to end up finding out that you are wrong.
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There will be multiple iterations throughout the process.
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There will be constraints that will come up – find creative ways to go through them
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The design process is not linear there are a lot of ups and downs, back and forths.