Introduction
“Exercise is good for your body and your mind”—many of us have heard this saying, but still find it difficult to exercise consistently.
Some of us have even tried exercising regularly but failed to do so due to lack of motivation, exhaustion from daily obligations, not seeing progress, and many more reasons. I myself have found it difficult to exercise regularly because I feel unmotivated and don’t know where to start. I also took a look at some existing workout apps but found them unmotivating. So I wondered if I could design an exercise app that could potentially provide a solution to the problem and help many more people reach their exercise goals. What would the solution look like?
Team
Solo Project
Role
UI/UX
Tools
Figma, Photoshop
Year
2022
Platform
Desktop
Problem Statement
Some people find it hard to consistently exercise because of busy work and family schedules.
There are also many daily distractions like friends, social media, and entertainment, as well as as negative feelings associated with exercise. These distractions can hinder people from reaching their health goals.
Project Overview
YUJ is a user-friendly app that motivates people to do yoga for the long term. Each exercise video is short so that it doesn’t take too much time and easy to follow. The main differentiator for me app is that users will gain points or credits from completing classes, after which they can choose to redeem the rewarded credits to buy sporting goods or grocery shopping or any other promotion they choose from within the app.
Research
Comparative & Competitive Analysis
After some research, I found similar apps that focus on yoga exercises, but there were flaws in their inherent design. First all of them required my to pay after just 1 or 2 free lessons. Second and more importantly, they didn’t feel as personal or approachable, and I wished for a more 1-on-1 experience with each lesson.
Interview results
Q1: What are the reason makes you keep using an existing exercise app?
8 out of 15 users who currently use an exercise app do so because of rewards and personalized plans available for them.
“points function to encourage users to use app complete daily exercise goals”
“Community challenges with coupons as rewards.”
“I find most useful are the “Training Plans” and the “Guided Runs”. I used it to prepare for some half marathons last semester and the way in which it guides you each week on what you should focus on feels like a nice structure without it being too rigid.”
“received personalized workout routines and feedback from a fitness coach.”
Q2: If there’s a new exercise app, what kind of exercises do you hope to be included in the app?
15 out of 20 participants suggested I include yoga or flexibility-focused exercises in this new exercise app.
“Possibly something with yoga, but if I’m going to be honest I feel as though the reason why I only use running apps is because I don’t have to follow any instructions on a screen. I can intuitively just listen to the guided runs and adjust my pace when necessary.”
“More variety from meditation / yoga /calisthenics”
“If I upload my exercise video, then the trainer gives advices and corrects my posture.”
“short exercises that are easy to understand”
“Yoga and at home exercises”
Q3: What kind of reward do you want to get after you finished doing the exercise (achieve your daily exercise goal)?
12 out of 20 participants said they would like to redeem coupons or gift cards for grocery and shopping. A small number of participants want other exercise related services.
“restaurant coupon”
“a free Starbucks drink lol maybe a discount to some store ?”
“maybe a partnership with gyms or points towards in-person classes”
“maybe unlock new exercises in the app, or some kind of money reward”
“coupons for grocery & shopping.”
Design process
I began the research process by searching for existing user data about why people don't exercise regularly. What I discovered was that some of the top reasons are people feel unmotivated to do exercise and exhausted from daily obligations.
After doing initial research online, I created a survey to ask people about their exercise habits or lack thereof. This survey aimed to learn some features that people like from existing exercise apps, the reasons why people don't exercise regularly, and what exercise people would like me to include in my app. After reading responses from my interviewees, I realized that most of my respondents wanted me to include flexible exercises, daily tracking, encouraging language and reward functions. Therefore, these four points are the unique features for this new user friendly exercise app.
In my survey, I asked what people would like me to include in this new exercise app. Some suggested that they want this new exercise app to include flexibility or stretching courses to help them warm up or cool down before or after workouts. Keeping these results in mind, I conducted additional online research and then decided to narrow down to yoga as the focus of my app. As yoga energizes people in the morning, serves as a stress reliever during the day, and relaxes people before bed. Each course is 4 to 10 minutes and is easy to follow.
Project Goals
I realized that many users wanted to exercise more consistently but failed to do so because of daily obligations and distractions. There was also the rewards factor, of how to give users motivation to begin to exercise each day and have that be consistent.
My goal was to create an app that would solve these issues by introducing short, digestible lessons that can be customized to cater to the needs of a user, where after each lesson the user will receive an amount of in-app currency/credit that can be used to redeem on the in-app rewards section.
Wireframes
After I conducted my research, I began to formulate a user flow and draw up some initial wireframes. Based on my research with 20 people, I noticed that most of my respondents are women who work in the office or students who are too busy to workout.
UI/Visual Design
I chose green because it is a global sign for raising mental health awareness and is pleasing to the eye. People feel refreshed and relaxed after looking at the color.
I decided to simplify the interface layout because it is cleaner and easier for users to navigate. In addition, the changes allow the users to quickly skim through the courses. And users can adjust the content that appears on their homepage on the top left corner.
The new changes are to make the buttons bigger to let users click through the pages easily. By adding pagination to the bottom of each step, users can more easily see the total number of steps the onboarding screen has/ in the onboarding process.
Interactive Prototype
Button interaction switching from home page to coaching session.
Home
Suggested yoga courses for individual users.
Coaching session
After subscribing to a yoga instructor, users will receive a confirmation and further instructions to chat with the instructor.
Reward
Users can redeem coupons or gift cards for grocery and shopping.
Result
According to the New York Post, 42% of Americans says they don't have time to exercise, and 35% of them say they don't have the motivation. Considering this data helped me better understand users' pain points. I then went on to research the pros and cons of other exercise apps to create a better yoga app. After researching online, I created a survey and sent it to different Slack channels. In the end, I conducted user research on 20 respondents.
After I gathered qualitative and quantitative data, I created a user flow based on the metrics.
From my research, I understand that to create long-term exercise habits, the exercise should be short, convenient, easy to follow, and encouraging. Research also shows that when individuals can get a reward after finishing the exercise, they are more likely to stick with it.
Therefore, my design solution is to make a yoga app focus on short at-home flexibility courses, where users can get coupons or gift card rewards to buy groceries or sports goods. If users want personal coaching sessions, more tailored classes, or meal plans, they can choose an upgraded plan for a fee/ cost.
Future iterations
I aim to do more user interviews and improve features based on user feedback, including running A/B testing to understand which design increases traffic on YUJ.
I hope to add features like tracking calories burned, duration of workout, encouragement features, average heart rate, and more.
I plan to design app features on other digital devices, such as an Ipad, Apple Watch, and a desktop.
A future plan is to provide a better user experience design for coaches and users to communicate better with one another. One example is adding UI/UX design on the Coaches' side.
