FITZ

Increasing engagement and repeat usage for FITZ, a fitness tracking app.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Background

FITZ is a health tracking app designed to help users within a group ( family or group of friends) to see how others are doing regarding health and fitness.

The company noticed decreased usage and wanted to develop a messaging feature for the app.

Role

UI/UX Designer - User Research, Wireframe, Prototype, Usability Test, Visual Design

Collaborator: Ana Massette

Objective

FITZ allows users to set, monitor and share individual goals. According to the company’s initial research, a messaging system that allows users to alert their friends and family as progress and goals are met will increase the app’s engagement and repeat usage.

UX Method

User surveys were sent out to recruit test participants, user interviews were conducted to understand pain points and behaviors, and usability testing were conducted using low and high fidelity prototypes to validate different iterations of the product.

Design Process

The Problem:

Users didn’t have way to message their friends and family when they achieve health progress directly on the app, causing decreased usage.

The Solution:

  • We designed an integrated and interactive messaging system that not only allows users to message each other, it also allows them to participate in virtual games to achieve their fitness goals together. Our final design aims to prove that an interactive messaging system built within the fitness tracking app will keep users entertained, which in turn will increase engagement and repeat usage .

DISCOVER PHASE

This is the target user group we are designing for:

● 18 - 34 years old

● Very tech-savvy — they are on their phones for several hours a day

● Very budget-conscious

● Messaging and communicating with friends and family is a very important part of their daily lives

What we learned from five user interviews:

  1. Commonly used messenger apps are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. People like these apps because they are easy to use and all their friends use them.

  2. Industry leaders in the fitness tracking app market are Fitlist, Map My Run, Nike Run Club

  3. Users want to share their fitness journey to inspire family and friends and promote a health lifestyle.

Taking what we learned from user interviews:

We conducted competitive analysis to study the current offerings by industry leaders and to gather inspiration from particular features that we liked about each app.

Based on our findings…

after analyzing Fitlist, Map My Run, Nike Run Club, we learned that there are things these fitness apps currently do not offer that users might find useful. The following are the action items we will focus on adding to our design:

  • Add option to invite friends and search for friends.

  • Make home screen more interactive and entertaining.

  • Add a rewards system for fitness achievements.

  • Add fun features to messaging system.

View FITLIST, MAP MY RUN, NIKE RUN CLUB - Full Analysis PDF

NEXT, we conducted competitive analysis on popular messenger systems to study the functionality patterns and what make a good messaging system, so we can take inspirations for what we need to focus on during the design process.

Based on our findings…

after analyzing Facebook messenger, Instagram messenger and Snapchat, we learned that:

  • Messaging system is an essential feature of social media apps, message systems help drive engagement and repeated usage.

  • The design of messaging systems vary, however, the functions are very similar to each other.

  • Common features of messaging system include :

    • Search box

    • Profile pictures of users in small circles

    • Call and video call

    • Take and send picture

    • Voice message,

    • Send emojis and Like button

    • React to messages with emojis.

  • Snapchat stands out because this app has fun emojis and a gaming system built into the messenger.

Before drafting the user flows for our app, we wanted to study other apps’ messaging flows:

Facebook Messenger

Instagram Messenger

Snapchat Messenger

Our potential messenger flow for FITZ:

Flow: User wants to send a group message

Flow: User wants to send a message

DESIGN PHASE

As a starting point for our design phase, a storyboard was drafted:

I did some sketches to draw out my vision of the solution.

Defining the MVP

Based on the sketching sessions, we identified the following key features for our Minimum Viable Product:

  • Set and track fitness goal. Users can define and track fitness goals

  • Share fitness progress. Users can share fitness progress with family & friends right without leaving the app.

  • Chat with family and friends. Users can chat with their family and friends without leaving the app.

  • Earn Rewards. Users are rewarded for efforts towards their fitness goals, rewarded when they share their progress and when they invite new users to join the app.

Lo-fi screens for the MVP:

VALIDATE PHASE

First Round Usability Testing:

  • We tested our MVP with five participants

  • Four interviews were conducted in person and one remotely using Zoom.

  • Each interview lasted about 30 minutes.

The main tasks the participants were asked to perform:

  1. Browse the home screen and find the messaging system.

  2. Find the option invite a friend to a challenge on the chat screen.

  3. Speak out loud their first impressions of the chat screen.

What are initial findings from testing?

  • Messaging option doesn't really stand out.

  • Navigation doesn't have Work out icon, user can only access Work out tracking from Homepage.

  • Users like the fitness challenges feature in the messaging system.

  • Should add rewards for people who win challenge.

Did we solve the problem?

  • We added a messaging system, users can now message friends and family without leaving the app.

Did we validate our hypothesis?

  • More testing required to test increase engagement and repeat usage.

Iterations:

  1. Make messaging option stand out.

  2. Re-design navigation bar.

  3. Add rewards system for the fitness challenges.

ITERATE PHASE

With the notes from the first round of testing, we iterated our first design and the result is a Hi-fi prototype that we used to perform our next round of Usability Testing.

VALIDATE PHASE

Second Round Usability Testing

  • The same five participants that fit into the app's target demographics were interviewed. 

  • Four interviews were conducted in person and one remotely using Zoom.

  • Each interview lasted about 30 minutes.

The main tasks the participants were asked to perform: 

  1. Speak out loud their first impressions of the app.

  2. Browse the home screen and find the messaging system.

  3. Find the option invite a friend (Tillie Larson) to a challenge on the chat screen.

  4. Send the City Run invite to a friend (Tillie Larson).

  5. Speak out loud their first impressions of the chat screen.

 

What are the findings from second round testing?

  1. A male participant mentioned that the app is very “pink”.

  2. All the participants agreed that the messaging system was easy to find, easy to navigate.

  3. Some participants mentioned that the option to invite a friend to join a challenge was a little confusing. 

  4. One participant didn’t know how to send the challenge invite because he didn’t know where to click. 

  5. Two participants said that the chat screen was not engaging enough because it was too simple.

 

Iterations:

  1. Changing the app’s theme color to something more inclusive to all genders.

  2. Remove the “Invite Friends to join Fitness Challenge” CTA.

  3. Make the option to Send Challenge Invite more clear.

  4. Add more fun features to the chat screen.

COMPLETED PROTOTYPE

With the notes from the second round of testing, we iterated our design and the result is a Hi-fi prototype.

Reflection & Next Steps

What are the challenges I faced during this project?

Initially, I only focused on designing a messaging system, but missed the importance of it being interactive and entertaining for the users.

During the process, I had to learn how apply the design principle of “Start at the end - Listing the questions I want the answers for”. This requires a clear understanding the problem early in the discovery phase, in order to ask the right questions that will yield the answers we are looking for.

If I had more time and resources:

I would focus on improving the gamification feature because:

1) Gamification usually comes as a separate app. However, a fitness app can also utilize a built in game experience as a motivational tool.

2) A fitness app with a built in game experience can yield a community of like-minded users. By being a part of a community, they can find the encouragement and accountability they need to keep up with their goals while interacting with others who have similar interests.

What are future goals for the next projects?

Increasing engagement and repeat usage is the goal of many social media apps, and in this case, our fitness tracking apps. This goal require that we stay updated with our understanding of users’ needs and also their attention span, as it keeps changing.

In our next projects, we hope to continue to design and test more app features that can retain users' attention, besides from the features commonly being offered.