Fitness Dojo
Toward a fitness app that fosters healthy competition
There are a plethora of fitness and wellness applications on the market. These apps generally track useful fitness data over time very well. Group fitness studios like Orangetheory and competition-style workouts like 5k races, marathons, and Crossfit are very successful at motivating through healthy competition and data output of some kind, whether it’s a person’s placing at the end of race or an individual’s calories burned at the end of a workout.
But, there is a gap in the fitness space for apps that can blend all of these ideas or create competition that meets users where they’re at in their own fitness journey or allow for friendly one-on-one competition amongst users.
The Problem
Highly processed foods and more sedentary lifestyles have steadily increased the American obesity rate for decades. For people trying to achieve a fitness goal, the deluge of information and imagery that exists isn’t always helpful or motivating. Social media skew individuals’ perceptions about their own bodies or expectations, leading to a decrease in self-esteem and a much lower drive to even begin or try to improve personal health. Fitness standard bearers and celebrities tend to be impossibly attractive, have decades of training experience under their belts, or using unsustainable or unhealthy methods to build their bodies and get results. How can regular people compete?
The answer is: they shouldn’t.
Users
What’s to be done? As always, users had a solution. Some users reported enjoying quantitative data, others reported finding it demotivating. But all users reported finding competition and what social integration existed enjoyable and motivating. All users interviewed for Fitness Dojo were busy professionals in their 30s and 40s - a good representation of the predicted user base. These users are unlikely to become competitive athletes short of a 5k run or possibly training hard for a specific short term personal goal. These goals align extremely well with the short burst challenge mechanic of Fitness Dojo.
Tools and Process
Simple sketched wireframes laid out the foundation. Directed storytelling from users inspired the idea of challenge functionality. Using Figma, a prototype was created.
User Insights
Users had a lot of feedback about functionality and additional wishlist features. Users reported a desire for more visual pop and were interested in further “gamification” within the app to further engagement.
Synthesis from findings and recommendations report
Iteration
Our testing goal was to determine the usability of the challenge function within the app. This testing was prompted with the statement: I’d like you to try to create a fitness challenge using this section of the app. Users began on the first screen of the challenge section and continued from there.
Final Design
Fitness Dojo’s final design is more colorful, accessible, and more enjoyable for users. A fitness app that relies on social interaction and constant engagement must be easily navigable and fun. Many revisions that found their way to the final design were directly from user suggestions - such as creating a toggle button during the “select competitor” portion of the challenge screen.
Thoughts
Fitness Dojo’s challenge feature is an intriguing idea for the already saturated fitness app market. User feedback drove all iteration in design. Further improvement on Fitness Dojo could be easily made through cleaner layout, more robust data visualization (leaderboards, challenge results, personal workout statistics) to drive users to continue challenging themselves and others. Notifications, messaging integration, and “shareable” screens or results would further the social goals of Fitness Dojo.