PROJECT 3: Fitness Watch Redone
The goal of the fitness watch project is to create basic UI mockups which will be used to enhance the overall experience.
The idea of this project was to find a way to motivate others to become active through wearable technology, and deter them from cheating the system. Although there are various fitness apps for download on mobile app store, it is difficult to find one that offers encouragement, community, and motivation.
We wanted to solve this issue while still using the advantages of modern technology and the craze around AI chatbots. Our plan is to create an app that would work as a fitness guide and a method of encouragement to users which would ultimately guide them into “gym culture”. In order to approach this, we did interviews to improve our initial idea and created an empathy map to verify that the user group we chose actually could use our app.
Using this we found what our target users needed through basic interviews, allowing us to further our idea with a better perspective on our user group.
Target User and Scenario
After completing preliminary research, we were finally able to completely define our target user as well as create a user scenario.
Defining our Target User
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Someone who works long hours, has an excuse not to workout
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Middle age person who has never been in a regular workout routine
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User feels like they don’t have enough time in the day to fit in a workout
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Doesn’t feel motivated enough to pick up the weights
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May be introverted in nature and less likely to want a workout buddy
Secondary Research
Purpose and Goals
Our main goal when we conducted our interviews was to get more insight into the world of those who fit our user group. We wanted to understand the needs and struggles of the user in order to develop our idea into something better.
Findings
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People who are unmotivated to work out typically are that way because they spend long days at school or work.
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People don’t go to the gym after they’ve become sore from exercising or if they don't know what to do at the gym (they won’t go if they aren’t actually specifically excited about something).
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People who purchase fitness watches tend to forget about or not use the fitness features (particularly on Apple Watch).
View my individual interviews below.
Results
Our group ended up with four interviews from primarily students who went to the gym and had an introverted personality. We learned from our interviews that most people were intrigued but also confused by our app idea. One other thing we learned is that the people in our user group either don’t work out every week or do workout but only for 2-4 days a week. We also learned that our app and chatbot could be considered awkward as people in our interviews said that if they were seen at the gym using our AI chat, they might feel embarrassed.
Ideation/ Design
Features
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Fitness schedule curated for people are interested in working out for the first time
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Estimated total time of workout
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Fitness Chatbot
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Motivates you to workout
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Workouts reward the user with healthy store coupons (e.g. Whole Foods)
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Organize and schedule workouts with people at where you work
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Social interactions features with people who are similar to you
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People can post to the social feed and share their completed goals
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Designed to lift people up in the community and motivate each other
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Voice commands
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Sketches/Mockups
Sketch 1 & First UI multimedia concept
This was our first sketch of our project concept. The sketch features a simple dialogue between the user and the AI. At first, we were considering creating the chatbot to answer diet and nutritional related questions, but we chose to focus our design on motivation for working out specifically. For our first UI multimedia concept, we were planning on keeping our app very simple and close to what users are familiar with in other fitness apps such as the apple fitness or the nike trainer app with the recent activity feature. Since our idea was still limited, we wanted to still include our idea of a community section as well as the chat as the main excitement point of our app. As you can see below, our ideas in the first sketch evolved into the first concept that looks more like a fitness app.
Contextual Inquiry
One contextual inquiry was completed by Logan for his second interview on Wednesday April 19th at around 5:00 in the CoRec gym.
Context: Working out at the gym with a friend and his friend.
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Navigating the gym looking for open weight machines
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Looking for people on their phone particularly on a fitness watch or app
Partnership: Observed the friend of my friend using gym equipment and fitness app
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Didn’t prompt or force any conversation or suggestions on my friend’s friend
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Allowed them to complete their workout/set without iinterruption
Interpretation: Began workout and asked them about their finess app and motivations
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Understand the behaviors and actions (when using the fitness app specifically) of my friend’s friend
Focus: Asked general questions but with a focus on motivation and behaviors
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Made general small talk trying to understand motivations, needs, and behaviors. I pursued any conversation that was surprising to me or was useful information
Final Storyboard
Jimmy is an introverted office worker who finds it difficult to make friends and work out after a hard day of work. He discovers FitChat and gets inspired to work out because of its AI communication chat box. After a few months, he is stronger and healthier.
Sketch 2 - Our Final UI Design
This sketch shows a more refined and stylized concept of our UI. The detailed reply from the chatbot and the features displayed are much more representative of what we wanted our design to look like. This sketch also implements the social aspect of our app via the community tab at the bottom of the second screen. To view our full and final UI, please see our multimedia component (Figma).
Design Rationale
Our final design is a fitness app for both iPhone and Apple Watch that gets people motivated to join the workout community and lifestyle. The main feature and focus of this design is a chatbot AI that the user may have conversation with. The chatbot can give words of encouragement, positive reinforcement, personal recommendations, workout types. The dialogue from the AI is designed to motivate different types of people, and it is constantly learning how it can do this better through experience with the application.
Shown below is the home screen and community screen of final UI design. The rest of the screens can be seen in the Figma (linked above).
My Direct Contributions
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Formatted and edited final documentation - Created app interface sketch
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Created and helped present team powerpoint
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Contributed to initial research
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Completed secondary research
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Edited and created documentation and documentation layout
Interviews
Presentation
For my first interview I interviewed (a friend of a friend) who I had met at the gym, Charles, when working out with my second interviewee (my friend Neil). My first interviewee, Charles, said that he would consider himself slightly introverted and that he works out at least 3-4 times a week (usually in the morning). During my interviews, I also found that both my interviewees thought that the concept of talking to an AI at the gym could be weird and awkward for them. While they both recognize that a chat feature in a fitness app could be very useful for others to motivate themself with, they also seemed to be leaning into the idea of brining unmotivated people into the gym community either through the app or through the AI matching people together.