MOTIVATR
An app that encourages users to exercise based on their mood and collates scientific information about the benefits of fitness
Project Overview
Most people are familiar with the physical and mental benefits of exercise. However, many folks still struggle with motivation at times, which can eventually lead to abandoning exercise altogether.
How can we help people stay motivated to continue with their fitness routines and thereby improve their overall health?
Research Goals
Understand what motivates people to work out, what keeps people motivated, and what causes people to lose motivation.
Competitive Analysis
After identifying the problem, I analyzed other possible competitors in the space. While each product has pros and cons, the simple, streamlined Nike Run Club app definitely stood out.
I did further indirect analysis on the nutrition-focused Noom app because of my own personal experience. Noom educated me during my own health journey and I found its psychology-based approach immensely effective for motivation.
User Interviews
Next I conducted User Interviews in order to more fully understand my potential user base. The interviews consisted of 14 open-ended questions posed to 5 participants from various backgrounds. The questions were designed to get more information on exercise practices, people's motivations to continue exercising, and people's reasons for quitting exercise. In order to group the large amount of information, I sorted it into categories using an affinity map. The categories were:
Categories
Goals
Frequency/Duration
Exercises I Don’t Like
Exercises I Like/Would Like to Try
Reasons For Exercising
Alone or With Others
App Features
Unmotivated
Challenges
Insights
These categories helped me organize the info but also helped me glean some new insights. Most people seem to be motivated by how exercise makes them feel, physically and mentally. Yet even though that is a universal experience, they all struggle to stay motivated to keep doing it. Most reasons they gave were physical challenges like chronic pain or surgery recovery, mental challenges like grief/loss, or simply time. If my design could target these three core reasons for becoming unmotivated, I think I could see some strong results. These insights allowed me to compose Point of View and How Might We statements, as well as create User Personas.
Point of View and How Might We Statements
The average person needs help maintaining their fitness routine because the tools and apps currently available do not sufficiently address the three core reasons that people struggle with exercise motivation.
How might we discover why someone is struggling with exercise motivation?
How might we help someone struggling with exercise motivation?
How might we inform users about new classes they may not have tried that might jumpstart their motivation?
The average person who exercises would benefit from gamification and financial incentives within an app because both of these techniques keep users engaged and motivated to maintain their exercise routine.
How might we incorporate gamification into the app?
How might we incorporate financial incentives?
How might we focus on joy/positivity/humor to counteract the arduous aspects of exercise?
User Personas
Jeff is a busy working father with young children who needs a product that shows him effective exercises he can do in a limited amount of time. He also geeks out on the data so would like detailed tracking and links to scientific articles.
Christina gets bored with doing the same exercises over and over again so would like an easy way to find new ones. She also loves to exercise in a group setting because she is mainly motivated by the social and fun aspects of group workouts.
User Flows
Based on the interviews, I knew that potential users wanted a seamless, simple, and fun product, but also one which targeted deeper, underlying reasons for losing fitness motivation. This led to me to creating a streamlined onboarding process which also included a “getting to know you” quiz, a fun and motivating way to redeem points earned while exercising for gift cards, and an easy way for users to find a specific exercise based on their current mood.
Onboarding Questionnaire
Initial Sign Up and “Getting to Know You” Quiz which provides individual fitness background/motivation struggles and recommends fitness plan accordingly
How to Redeem Points
Process showing how to locate a vendor gift card which has enough points to redeem and how to email gift card
Mood Selector
A way to enter one’s current mood, see a list of activities based on that mood, and select one of these specific activities
Wireframes
Low Fi
For the low fidelity sketches, I simply wanted to visualize the task flows and allow for a free-form creative brainstorm.
Mid Fi
Next, I worked on digitizing and laying out the information architecture in a more organized and visually appealing way. The mid-fi wireframes ended up being pretty close to the final designs!
Hi Fi
Quick, streamlined sign up and organic colors to emphasize that Motivatr is for everybody
Neumorphic buttons to give a more natural feel
Playful emojis to keep users engaged and a large amount of options so they can customize
Encouraging copy to show lack of judgment and support
Simple and fun carousel and clear, direct copy
Inspiring images, motivational points tally, links to scientific articles
User Testing
After prototyping the screens, I conducted user testing on all three of the task flows. My goal for the testing was to find any recurring pain points and to gather any important, actionable user insights. See results below.
Onboarding Questionnaire
Average Score: 1.2
1- easy, 5- difficult
Expected:
Users were able to complete the task in a reasonable amount of time and found the experience easy and intuitive
Unexpected:
1 user (senior) needed more explicit written directions
Most users wanted more options/plan selections
Recommendations:
Build out more options in questionnaire
Build out more options in the Plan Recommendations
How to Redeem Points
Average Score: 2.8
1- easy, 5- difficult
Expected:
Users will know which moods to select and find the process intuitive, easily customizable, and motivating
Unexpected:
2/5 users found the actual mood selection confusing/not sure what to click
Users wanted more options for moods
1/5 users did not like the images of perfectly fit people, not representative of all body types
3/5 users wanted to see a list of class options in the “HIIT” flow
2/5 users wanted more of the scientific based articles/info about specific activites
Recommendations:
Will remove the greyed out mood options b/c it is too leading
Add an affordance (more info) for users to read rest of activity copy
Add a screen of HIIT classes in user’s area
Average Score: 1.8
1- easy, 5- difficult
Expected:
Users will know to scroll and pick Starbucks as the only linked option and figure out quickly how to send a gift card to their email
Unexpected:
First user didn’t know what points system was so after this test, I switched points to the 2nd position
Carousel gave 2 users difficulty
2 users wanted more options for gift cards (hate Micky D’s, don’t drink coffee, etc.)
Recommendations:
More options for gift cards
Added a horizontal scroll bar to clue users in that it is a carousel
Mood Selector
Insights
With the information gleaned from the testing, I was able to find 4 major pain points which multiple testers mentioned. I have detailed them and the changes I made below.
Changes Made After Testing
Added a horizontal scroll bar to clue users in that gift card choices are a carousel
Added an affordance (more info) for users to read rest of activity copy
Removed the greyed out mood options b/c it is too leading
Added ACCEPT screen instead of “FIND A CLASS” in HIIT screen so users not expecting list of classes
Measures of Success
Average “ease of use” score for all tasks was 1.16 (1 - easy, 5 - difficult)
All users gave extremely positive feedback about visual design
Most critical feedback was related to quantity of options, not usability
ALL users would recommend product to others
RECENT WORK
