The Process: The Final Product & Presentation
Creating a more beneficial fitness tracking app.
The challenge.
Most fitness trackers are relatively primitive and cumbersome. These technologies also seem to only track people’s lives, not change them at all. How can the actual product and its digital counterpart work to improve people’s lifestyles? This is where ReMo Technologies comes in. Basically, the start-up uses fitness tracker technology to improve a biker’s form while riding through wearable gear. My group and I decided to work on modifying stretching habits through digital technology.
My Role.
In the beginning of the project, I spent a lot of time looking into market research. As we moved forward, I served as a designer on the project, and I ensured that our digital product is a fierce competitor to some of the big name fitness trackers out there. It was definitely a collaborative process and my team and I really spit up the work well.
The Research and Analysis.
After brainstorming and deciding what we are going to focus on in our project, we began sketching out our ideas and doing market research. I scouted out what is already on the market. I am an avid Fitbit user so I started there and moved my way to the realm of smart watches. I found that most trackers are wrist-wearables only. ReMo’s haptic wearables are versatile. They just need to be attached to at least one joint. Currently, most fitness trackers have a simplistic, light-colored app that allows users to not only track their movements and sleep patterns, but also engage with their friends.
Fitbit is inarguably the most popular fitness tracker for non-athletic, regular people (or as many athletes kindly call us, N.A.R.Ps). It is easy to use, isn’t overly clunky, and has a digital counterpart that is simple and works well. It essentially gives users all of the data that they need to be “healthy.”
And then we interviewed.
While I was working on market research, my group mates were conducting interviews. We found that many people do not know how to stretch or just don’t remember to do it. We began to feel confident in our decision to target this area of exercise. Through our interviews, we had some findings and insights:
Many do not breathe correctly while stretching
Most people do not stretch properly out of laziness or lack of knowledge
It’s difficult to monitor movements when one is outdoors
The lack of mirrors in the outdoors makes it hard to
Many play multiple kinds of sports
While people are trying to workout different muscle groups, they are more likely to injure themselves
Many enjoy working out with friends
Friends can be motivators or healthy competitors
Our interviewees were intrigued by a digital product that would remind them, show them, and fix their behaviors. Based off of these testimonies, we decided to create a product with a home page, a friends page, and a more in-depth stretch and how-to page to correspond with the physical product.
Based on all of our research, we wanted to create a simple, easy to use digital product that would work hand-in-hand with ReMo’s haptic technologies to teach non-athletic people how to stretch. Our mobile app would work by presenting tracked data in an easy-to-understand graphic, remind users to stretch, and illustrate how to do so without injury.
Our Persona and User Flows.
We decided to create our app for the non-athletic regular person who wants to be healthy. Our prototype goes through the user flow of a man named Francisco, a techie who doesn’t know how to stretch. We want to make it easier for Francisco to stay in shape without hurting himself. Before using our product, he didn’t stretch correctly or when he was done with his workout. With ReMo’s app, he was reminded to stretch and how to do it.
Basically, our persona of Francisco is a non-athletic individual with injuries who is trying to stretch better and take care of himself. With our product, he minimizes his pain and has a better workout.
The Design.
We began with sketching out our designs on paper. Ultimately, we decided we wanted to really focus in on the stretching how-to’s and data presentation. We had so many ideas, but we wanted to really emphasize the stretching component of working out.
We started designing the app on Sketch but ultimately moved to Marvel App because we could all work on the project without sending a thousand email attachments. I was one of the primary designers on this project which was definitely a challenge at first. This was my first time designing a fitness app, but through our market research, we were able to create a fiercely competitive product.
Our app design used the same colors that are used on ReMo’s website– dark gray, a pale yellow, and a more relaxed neon green. Our typeface is Lato which is relatively easy to read quickly. I worked primarily on the first few pages as well as the integration of each part in the greater usage of the app. It is easy to use and has simple graphics, and a high contrast in colors which can be seen quickly during a workout.
Testing our product was easier than expected.
The app was well received by our user testers; however, they were concerned with the price point. Since this technology is difficult to make, the physical product would most likely be a bit more expensive than the average fitness tracker. The app itself can work without the physical gear since it has how to videos, but it will not have the same capacity for behavioral tracking.
We decided to then incorporated more how-to videos into our app so that if you don’t have the gear on, you can still use the digital product. The app provides an option to workout sans gear and it then prompts you to different pages and actions. We thought this would be the best solution to the pricing problems. This also leaves room in the future for beginners who take a liking to the digital product, to become more invested in their stretching and eventually purchase the physical gear.
Reflections.
This entire project was a very exciting process. My group and I meshed very well and were able to create a digital product that we could all see ourselves using. It was difficult, at first, to pick a single idea. ReMo’s product has so much potential and can really be used in so many facets of life. Our ultimate goal was to create a digital product for the average Joe– and we did. The app is not too difficult to use and it is really meant for the non-athletic regular person.
I learned a lot from this project. I create content I never really thought I would make. Designing is one of my passions, but I did not really think that I would have enough coding experience to make an app. Working with this group was an awesome experience mostly because we were able to lift each other up and bring out the best of everyone’s talent. Overall, I am very proud of the digital product we made. There are a lot of possible changes we can make, but our current prototype is a good base for greater growth.