Problem:
BridgeAthletic wants to test a new way to grow users' retention
while using our mobile app.
​
How can we provide our users with the tools, resources, and motivation they need to achieve their goals and feel a sense of accomplishment?
Solutions:
My approach involves identifying and emphasizing the most significant metrics for our active users, allowing them to track their progress and performance easily. Furthermore, I provide detailed insights into their past workout achievements to motivate our users to surpass their prior milestones and reach new heights.
Role:
UI/UX Designer
Teammate:
Lead Product Designer
Engineer
CTO
Timeline:
June- October 2018
No More Excuses
“I’M TOO TIRED”,
“I DON’T HAVE TIME”,
“MAYBE TOMORROW..”​​
These are some of the common excuses you and I have probably used to skip a workout/ go to the gym. Or maybe you already are a healthy individual that has a workout routine that you are crushing regularly, but sometimes there are one of those days; you just don't feel as motivated to workout?
Coaching In The Digital Age
BridgeAthletic is a small startup company that has developed a software platform to create high-performance training tools for coaches and athletes. You can create customized training programs that are delivered straight to your smartphone or tablet.
How to Improve Motivation On Continuing to Workout with Our App
I found active people like to look at the stats on their Fitbit or Apple Watch to see their progress. It helps them to understand their daily movement and health history. I thought adding a motivation factor to the app to help drive users' engagement would be a great addition to the app. I started my research by conducting a few rounds of surveys and user interviews.
Some of the questions I asked in the survey included:
-
Why is exercising important to you?
-
How do you intrinsically motivate yourself to exercise?
-
What is the hardest part of staying motivated?
The BridgeAthletic app excelled at structuring workouts, although it faced challenges maintaining user engagement over time.
Based on the research, people are motivated to exercise when they can see the results of their hard work. Nothing motivates people more when they start seeing results.
After surveying 42 participants and conducting 10 user interviews, I discovered several major trends that we needed to address in the next phase of our design process.
Some of the key findings from the users' research are:
Pivoting to A New Strategy
Throughout the process, we have realized if our users are couch potatoes, nothing we show them will make them get off the couch and start exercising all of a sudden. Instead, we want to switch focus on the already active and enthusiastic users about crushing their workout and achieve new goals with each workout.
If you're not changing your mindset about getting in shape, nothing we show you will change your mind.
Stepping Into The Shoes of Our Users with Personas
I created multiple personas based on user research and interviews, which helped me communicate my findings with the team. The personas also ensured that users' goals and needs were at the front of my mind as I progressed with the design.
I've created multiple personas focusing on different user groups:
-
Individuals working with a personal trainer,
-
Athletes training remotely,
-
Athletics training with coaches
Each persona addressing their concern and metrics that will matter to them most.
1 of the 3 personas I've created for the project.
Early Design Explorations
With the old design, the home page focus solely on the training program itself. Early exploration I did mainly focused on information gathering. After some collaboration with the lead designer, we thought of changing to focus on building motivation for the users instead.
Early design explorations included gamification and a workout progress section to engage users to continue to workout with our app.
Early design exploring concept of navigation bar, training program, and other ideas such as gamification.
After we switched focus to help our users to reach new goals, I proposed adding a grid of interchangeable goal-tracking metrics to validate my assumption that users like to look at their health tracker to understand their health history and habits.
Late explorations focusing on users' progress with personal goal metrics displayed
Final Design
For the new home page/dashboard design, I focus on a few design principles to create a useful hub of information that can help our users feel successful with their workout.
-
Focus on the users need,
-
Don't flood the users with too much data;
-
​Using data visualization to help users interpret data with a better context.
The default sets of goals tracking metrics are drawn from early research on what metrics people care about the most.
With a new home screen in place, a new navigation system needs to keep all the content together. I purpose a new navigation bar at the bottom of the screen and reshuffle some of the more useful functions so they would be located here.
Due to time constraints, I have reshuffled some of the more useful features based on early research and personal preference and brought them out onto the navigation bar.
Implementation
After I finalized the design with the lead designer and CTO, I created detailed design spec to communicate with the engineering team, located in Vietnam.
Not having the engineering team in-house provided another layer of challenge. I had to present my design ideas through a detailed design spec to communicate my ideas to the engineering team.
Outcomes
Daily Engagement
The new features make the app more interactive and personalized, which might have increased daily user engagement rates. Features like custom goal metrics and progress bars can turn routine checks into a more rewarding experience.
User Retention
The app could have significantly increased user retention by incorporating visible progress tracking. Users who see tangible evidence of their progress are more likely to continue using the app, as it reinforces their motivation and the value of their efforts.
Reflection and Learning
I felt fortunate to work with a small, tight-knit team and a great mentor in a fast-paced startup environment. I had the opportunity to take ownership to work on a few new features for the BridgeAthletic mobile app, which is a great learning experience. There are a few other ideas I have for the app, which is not included due to time constraint.
​
From this project, I've learned how to collaborate with other designers to solve design problems. I've learned how to manage deadlines in a fast-paced startup environment. And I've also learned how to communicate and defend my design ideas with the rest of the team.
