University of Toronto
Ufit fitness app
Problem statement
How to motivate U of T students to be more physically active?
Overview
The University of Toronto Innovation Hub was seeking ideas to enhance the campus experience by helping students stay physically active. Our team seized the opportunity to collaborate with them, with the possibility of implementing our solution if we get the highest final score. We presented our progress weekly and received feedback from them and industry experts.
Project type: UX design
My roles: UX designer, UX researcher, interaction designer, storyteller, UX writer and presenter
Teammates: Running, Wing, Lei Qing
Date: April 2020
Understanding the problem
To better understand the pain points and the needs of our users, we first conducted secondary research, survey and semi-structured interview. Our participants were all U of T students. We interviewed 10 participants and surveyed 31 participants.
Survey and secondary research results
Nearly half of participants are physically inactive.
Most of them are inactive because they lack willpower and lack time.
Most of physically inactive participants would like to go to gym if they were given chances.
Interview results
The results are mostly consistent with the secondary research results:
Narrow down the focus
We used affinity diagram to process the results. Based on those findings, we identified the three top pain points for users to be physically inactive:
Lack of willpower
Lack of time
Bored with exercise without friends to train together
User analysis
Bella Wick
2nd-year undergraduate student
Hobbies: Watch TV and being a couch potato
Favourite food and drink: Snacks and bubble teas
Wishes: Stay fit and manage weight
Bella's struggle
Ideation
We brainstormed and picked three best ideas based on their impact and feasibility.
Work out game: Make work out a fun thing to do, like playing a game.
Work out partner: Match a student with the same fitness goals to work out together
Reward system: Reward users food vouchers for their workout.
Evaluate the low-fidelity prototypes
We started prototyping the ideas and created a mid-fidelity prototype and moved on to evaluate on that.
We recruited 4 users randomly on campus.
Our goals for the testing were to:
1. Learn if our solutions successfully motivate users
2. Test the usability of the new flows
Key finding 1: All users we tested say they are more motivated if they have a fitness partner!
As we thought, having someone to push you when you are not motivated is a big plus for users.
Key finding 2: Participants didn't like food vouchers as rewards
Participants said that rewards such as food vouchers are not very motivating. They are afraid that the more they exercise, the more they eat.
Solution 2: Changed the rewards to medals and rankings on leaderboard
Medals and rankings on leaderboards can foster a sense of community and friendly competition. They’re also effective in motivating users for personal growth over the long term.
On the home screen, add a celebration animation when users have completed their workout goal.
Key finding 3: Users didn't like how fitness games work
Although they liked the idea of gamification and collecting fitness points for completing workouts, they didn’t like having to click the screen every time they finished an action—it felt excessive. Additionally, users said they would benefit from tutorials to ensure they are doing it correctly.
Solution 3: Removed the unnecessary manual interaction during work out
We replaced the workout game with a workout program that doesn’t require any clicking but keeps the gamification concept.
Updates
Although our project was not selected for implementation, we received positive feedback from the head of the innovation hub and industry experts.
Key takeaways
The power of storytelling. From the four presentation sessions, I learned that telling a user centered story is the key to capture users’ attention, effectively communicate research findings and demonstrate product’s value. By pairing with visuals, good story could elicit people’s emotions and make it much easier for people to empathize with users.
The importance of iteration. During the project, we made several mistakes in the middle. However, thanks to iteration, we were able to get back on the right track before committing too much time on one version of the prototype. As a result, I learned the importance of using rapid prototyping in which I could quickly create a mockup, evaluate the design, get feedbacks, and make improvements.
Focus on the problem and not the solution. I sometimes jump to solutions way too early before clearly understanding the problem and I believe that’s the human nature. I learned that I should always conduct user research and empathize with users to understand real user problems before working on solutions. Otherwise, it’s very easy to draw wrong conclusions from wrong user problem.