If it’s easy do it easy, if it’s hard do it hard. Just get it done. These are the famous words of Jim Rohn, the guru in public speaking and motivation. But “getting it done” is never a walk in the park especially when it comes to a fitness routine. Regardless of how appealing the benefits that await may be, it can be a drudgery. So how do we motivate a gym goer who has signed up for gym classes to actually go to those classes, keep going and achieve their goals? Gymly seeks to answer this.

Problem statement

The focus of this project was on goal setting: how do we motivate a gym goer to set goals and see them through? This focus was picked from the project brief and user persona provided by the client.

Role

My role in this project was product design. It included:

• User and market research

• Design and prototyping

• Usability testing

User research

I asked a few people who I would say are somewhat consistent in exercising this question:

what would make you enroll for gym membership and stay motivated to keep going?

The second type of research was from existing research shared online.

Conclusions from the research

Source: PT Direct

Market research

Competitor analysis was focused on 3 of Gymly’s key competitors: Glofox, ClassPass and Virtuagym.

User persona

The user persona was provided as part of the brief. Jamie, the persona wants to eliminate 2 frustrations he is currently experiencing: motivation and clarity of what to do next.

With the research insights and persona, I moved on to designing a user flow.

User flow

Goal setting: How can we encourage Jamie to set goals and keep him motivated to reach them?

Wireframe

The user flow was then translated to a set of wireframes to see how all the key elements would fit in the layout.

Brand voice

Bold, modern, professional, premium is what I was going for with the brand’s tone and voice. This was made possible by combining color and typography. Barlow was the typeface of choice for its bold stylish look in addition to having a condensed version perfect for headings. Dark mode was chosen to bring out the bold modern look which additionally allows media (images and videos) to shine through as the center of attention.

Usability testing

This was an in-person test conducted using Figma Mirror on a phone device so as to get more realistic feedback. The tests exposed a few issues in the flow specifically:

The booking flow

The process seemed confusing to 50% of the participants.  Specifically in the area of adding a recurring session, adding multiple sessions and actually adding a selected workout to the list.

The calendar

Under booked sessions, 50% of participants understood the week tags as indicators of their workout schedule and not as a general monthly calendar.

General feedback

Key areas that require user action need a little more contrast to make them stand out for example, the check in notification.

The takeaway

Designing a fitness based app has a lot of moving parts and requires quality time designated to each feature. Usability testing is also a key phase in validating prior assumptions. What makes sense to me may not necessarily make sense to everyone else. It’s a phase in the design process I have come to appreciate. My next step is to refine the flows based on the feedback I have received then test it out again.