HealthCheck: Full Mobile App
Overview
Health-check is a mobile application where users can participate in custom exercise challenges called “check-ins” with their friends.
This allows users to stay motivated and build accountability among their network of friends. Health-check also lets users record and track their exercise routines.
Problem
How can users get motivated and find accountability while tracking their fitness and exercise?
My Role
Sole UX strategist and designer
Identifying the Problem
As a fitness enthusiast who enjoys the physical and mental benefits of consistent exercise, I go through phases of inconsistency and lack of motivation. I know that I’m most motivated when there’s a competitive aspect to exercise as well as a group or community that can hold me accountable.
I’ve tried to do fitness challenges with friends numerous times but they always fall short because we’re in different cities or we didn’t have an easy way to track things and check in on each other. Based on this reflection, it seemed worthwhile to research if others had a similar experience and if so, how can this be solved?
Research
Survey
I conducted a survey with 19 participants to get a very general understanding of people’s fitness routines, goals, and habits.
KEY FINDINGS
TAKEAWAY
The survey results made it apparent that a large focus of the app should be on cardio exercise and weightlifting. Although the initial idea had a more holistic approach, mental health exercises like meditation weren’t used by the majority so that fell out of scope.
Interviews
Next I conducted 3 interviews to better understand people’s exercise motivations and dive deeper into their experiences trying to maintain a consistent exercise routine.
COMMON THEMES
Participates in group classes and is motivated by friends and group fitness
People really enjoy group classes because it gives them motivation seeing all of the people around them exercising and giving it their all.
Misses being a part of a fitness community
Tracking your workouts is important in seeing and making progress
A mix of apps are used to track all exercise, running in one, weightlifting on excel or another app
TAKEAWAY
People really enjoy group classes because it gives them motivation seeing all of the people around them exercising and giving it their all. Working out is hard and doing it with a friend or group makes it more enjoyable. Most people track their workouts as a way to look back on their hard work and see progress but there isn’t a standout app that all participants like to use.
User Persona
After analyzing all of the research data up until this point a clear persona began to form: Daniel. Daniel primarily exercises to relieve stress and stay relatively fit. He’s looking for a way to log his workouts and hopefully participate in some group fitness to boost his motivation.
Competitor Analysis
To familiarize myself with the current market, I chose the 3 most downloaded fitness tracking apps to analyze: MyFitnessPal, Fitlist, and Strong.
KEY FINDINGS
large emphasis on giving users a total metric to base their progress on
general layout of exercise logs are cluttered
lack of a social feature like a feed or other friend interactions
the well designed health apps have a heavy emphasis on nutrition
Information Architecture
After all of the research, it became clear which features of the app I knew I should focus on. Users need an organized and intuitive way to record their workouts and they need an interactive social aspect to their fitness journeys. The features below became the main focus:
an intuitive workout recording feature
an activity log
a way to interact with friends and feel a sense of community
A Task Flow was created to outline the steps for creating a weightlifting routine for a user to record their workout.
In addition, I built a User Flow to outline one of the main features, Check-Ins. The Check-Ins feature was created as a way for users to interact with friends while also motivating users to stay accountable within their fitness communities.
Design
With the information architecture laid out, I moved onto designing HealthCheck. My initial focus was to create a well organized and readable log since that was a major downside of other apps on the market. I also focused on a group challenge feature that is easy to navigate and feels familiar to other social apps people may use.
Wireframes
High Fidelity
CREATE CHECK-IN FLOW
LOG STRENGTH TRAINING WORKOUT FLOW
Test
Usability Testing
I conducted usability testing for 3 major flows: logging a cardio workout, logging a weight lifting workout, and creating a check-in. I also observed general navigation throughout the app.
After consolidating findings in an affinity map, some major things stood out:
The navigation in general needed some improvement, the labeling had some ambiguity and the functions weren’t immediately understood.
The Check-In flow was a bit confusing so there needed to be improvements in the descriptions and labeling
The buttons used to start, pause, and end a workout was a little confusing. Some improved labeling would definitely improve the usability there.
Navigating about the Check-Ins took a few attempts to learn (ie: going back to the list of Check-Ins vs. viewing a specific group Check-In)
Iterate
Major Iterations
NAVBAR:
The first navbar wasn’t descriptive enough and users found it difficult to understand which page they were on
Made labels more descriptive
Minor updates to the UI for more consistency and learnability
CHECK-INS:
Check-ins were a unique feature and required more descriptions for new users who found them confusing. Users also had to record workouts in the Log feature and repost them in the Check-In feature which was redundant.
Cross-posting feature was added at the end of the add exercise flow
General spacing and hierarchy were improved
ADD EXERCISE CATEGORIES:
Yoga, Pilates, etc proved to be a redundant category when the Other option also existed. As another type of exercise based on time, it made sense to remove one of the categories.
Removed an exercise type and made the cardio name solely devoted to tracking runs
CARDIO:
Users found the pause, start and stop buttons confusing during testing. The label of “Cardio” was also too general for the capability of the feature.
Added labels to the start/stop buttons for better clarity
Reworded less descriptive “Cardio” heading to “Run”
STRENGTH TRAINING:
Workouts aren’t static and exercises can change in the middle of a workout. The original flow forced users to create their workout and no ability to edit throughout the workout.
Added the ability to edit and add a set during a weightlifting exercise
Reflection
As my first full mobile application design, HealthCheck had many ups and downs throughout. The lifestyle and fitness industry has so many niches that I initially underestimated. After conducting research I quickly realized why there are so many different avenues you can explore throughout the fitness industry. People’s perspectives on health and fitness are so diverse that it makes it difficult to solve problems for more than a few groups at once.
I really enjoyed interviewing participants during this design because I experienced people connecting the dots between exercise and their overall well-being in real time. It was motivating to see that no matter where people are in their fitness journies, they all had things they wanted to improve on.
Future Steps
Due to the time constraints I was only able to focus on a few key features but if future iterations were made I would definitely add some progress indicators. The My Log feature could feature a progress section with different graphs and visuals to give users more insight for their workouts. The Check-Ins feature could also include a picture or video upload. I think it could help users feel even more motivated and a part of a community by seeing real-life updates from their friends.