Fitstein
AR App Design
Project Overview
This project was build to raise your fitness levels with the help of Augmented Reality. Our main goal was to find a solution to tackle a current societal issue through the use of creative technologies that has been severely effected since pandemic.
This was a group project that was done during my time in the Interactive Media Practice program at the University of Westminster in 2022.
Problem Statement
While gyms and health centres had become more expensive after the several lockdowns ended, the number of classes offered had sharply reduced because of cost-cutting.
All of us have put on ‘pandemic weight’, and were eager to shed some kilos. Turning to various fitness apps, each of us found different problems, from not being motivated enough, to not knowing whether our exercises were done correctly enough – both problems that were initially being solved by instructors.
Proposed Solution
-
A workout fitness app (via mobile and ipad) that provides its users with workout analysis, both during and post-workout, and virtual social elements via the use of AR elements.
-
This app aims to help people exercise much better from the comfort of their own home.
-
Users will be able to choose and ‘try on’ their ideal body types through AR, and accordingly be given guides and prompts letting them know if they are doing something wrong or right, and help push them to achieve better results.
The Challenge
How can fitness apps provide the feeling of an in-person instructor who corrects your form with the help of technology?
Stage 1: Empathise
-
Market Research
-
Technology Research
-
Competitive Research
-
Audience Research
Market Research
The UK is a fitness hotspot. There are over 7,200 fitness clubs in the UK, with over 10 million combined members.
Technology Research
Interactive Mirrors are the latest type of exercise equipment designed to make it easier to get a full-body workout at home.
Fitness mirrors are unique in that they have a reflective display that allows you to stream exercise classes while
keeping an eye on your posture and form.
Many health clubs have started streaming professionally coached classes to customers through virtual reality glasses and headphones.
Additionally, athletes are finding a new way to communicate and share with fans; Floyd Mayweather has developed his own Mayweather at home boxing.
Competitor Analysis
In addition to the user interviews, we compared the offerings and functionalities of 6 different exercise apps that imbed creative technologies, along with 7 other regular exercise apps.
In detail competitive analysis can be found here.
Audience Research
Health is a big concern these days especially due to the pandemic. Although being healthy was generally important to a lot of people, the pandemic has forced us to look at our lives and make crucial changes.
With the sudden lifestyle change, the adoption of digital healthcare apps has skyrocketed. In 2019, only 11% of people thought digital health was the future, as opposed to 76% in 2020! This is a huge mentality shift that is impacting the future of digital innovation adoption.
Stage 2: Define
-
Market Stratergy/ Costing
-
SWOT Analysis
-
Technology
-
Target Audience
-
User Peronas & Empathy Maps
-
Goals
Marketing Strategy & Costing
Following the fremium business model, Fitstein will offer certain basic features to users at no cost, and will charge a premium for advanced features. Relevant paid advertisements such as offering accessories or filters for the profile avatars will be another source of revenue.
To lower the barrier of entry, users will be able to download the app, and experience on workout through AR, before needing to make an account and pay. AR in fitness is still new technology, and it is important to show its value to new users.
We positioned the cost of the app at £4 for all features, , £2 for the Standard Edition and £0 for the Free Edition, which allows users to test out two exercises for free.
From in-app to off-app marketing strategies, we looked at this project beyond just a UX/UI project.
It would be ideal to have a website for legitimacy, even if its just a landing page, social media presence and email campaigns, before moving on to more creative strategies such as partnerships and personalised push-notifications.
SWOT Analysis
Target Audience
Fitstein targets GenZ and Millennials living in major cities in Europe like London, Paris or Milan. Their professions range from lawyers, journalists, engineers, designers, tech folks – people who more open to integrating technology in their workout routine. At an initial stage we targeted only London and can expand after third year.
Primary Target Audience
Secondary Target Audience
Personas & Empathy Map
We mapped the response and thought of the users we interviewed to better understand their process and thinking.
Our fitness expert (Chi-Han Lin), who had successfully opened a gym back in China before he came to the UK was able to guide us into digging deeper into our user’s personas, and extract hidden thought processes and dissect responses.
Persona 1
Persona 2
Empathy Map of Persona 1
Based on the research, we came up with 3 key problems that needed to be solved.
-
Problem 1: Lack of access to in-person instructors leads to incorrect form and exercise postures, which can cause injuries.
-
Problem 2: It’s hard to follow an instructor virtually – you’re not able to see all sides of the body.
-
Problem 3: To remain motivated without a visual in mind requires a lot of self-determination. How does one know what our body may look and feel after?
Goals
Based on the research and findings, we came up with 3 goals to base our solutions around.
-
Goal 1: Real-time for correction
-
Goal 2: AR Filters to choose your ideal body type
-
Goal 3: Building a community
Stage 3: Ideate
-
Information Architecture
-
User Flow
-
Final Tech Features
Information Architecture
Our IA was based on the 3 goals we identified: real-time for correction, AR Filters to help users choose their ideal body type and building community
Our IA was based on the 3 goals we identified: real-time for correction, AR Filters to help users choose their ideal body type and building community
.png)
User Flow
We built an extensive user flow based on Goal 1 and Goal 2. Several different iterations were made before we settled on the one below.
Tech Features
We started off with 10 functionalities (!!), but quickly realised that to make a successful MVP, we need to start small. We cut it down to six that we thought we could accomplish. And once we started actually designing / coding the app, we came down to three. The biggest learning here was the amount of time it takes to build each feature.
Stage 4: Prototype
-
Mid-fidelity wireframes
-
Goal findings
-
High-fidelity wireframes
-
UI Kit
-
XD Prototype
Mid- fidelity wireframes
As someone who doesn’t use fitness apps regularly, constantly building iterations and prototyping with our end users helped me define the screens a lot better than I would have imagined.
Many times, when we are doing a university or personal project, we take it on because we as individuals have faced this issue. And we sort of become the target audience ourselves, thereby assuming many solutions. However, in this case, I was constantly showing the screens to different people, our professors and of course, our in-house fitness expert.
Final Screens
The entire project was consolidated with a design system.
Stage 5: Testing
-
App Testing
-
User Testing
Testing
Some BTS fun!!
Final Thoughts
With the final prototype created my final thought on this project is to create detailed UCD approach on onboarding screens why the user want to collect gender, body type data, etc., and how will it benefit him/her in order to get a more personalised workout plan / overall experience. I want to create more solid feature screen that was not possible to achieve in a limited time. Also, the AR filter screen need more work and want to create and learn more AR filter creation in our project. My favourite part in this project was to build this in teams and have fun with.
If I had more time, I would dive deeper in developing some of those nice-to-have features. These features would add more characteristics to the business and increase the competitiveness. It would have been more interesting if we had done the UI in dark mode.