Increased Engagement On Fitness App With New Messaging Features
Mobile UI/UX Design | UX Research | Business Constraints
I designed a mobile app and messaging features that created an in-person workout experience to increase engagement.
Scope
This was a student project where I needed to improve the features of a hypothetical product.
My Role
I was the sole designer responsible for research, design, prototyping, and testing.
UI/UX Designer
UX Researcher
Timeline
1-month independent end-to-end student project.
Tools
Figma, Miro, Zoom, Google Suite
Project Overview
Brief
A well-established fitness app was having trouble keeping users on the app. On average, user engagement is heavy for the first 3 weeks, and then it drops off leading to the deletion of the app.
The product manager requested that a new messaging feature be designed to increase engagement.
Problem
I needed to create an engagement new messaging feature.
Solution
Momentum is a mobile, fitness-tracking app that allows users to set individual fitness goals, perform and track workouts, and interact with friends in the following ways:
Video chat workouts
Chat with friends
Send workout suggestions or results
User Persona
18 - 34 years old
Very tech-savvy — on their phones for several hours a day
Very budget-conscious
Messaging and communicating with friends and family is a crucial part of their daily lives
Process
Research — Ideate — Design — Prototype — Test — Iterate
After looking over the brief, I was skeptical.
I assumed that people don't use fitness apps to message each other and share results. They use them to track fitness, find workouts, and set goals.
Why would a messaging feature help engagement?
For starters, other fitness apps had social and messaging features.
Big Brands’ Features
I started by looking at major companies in the fitness app space: Nike Run Club, Strava, and Fitlist. Each had tailored its messaging-like features to mimic social media.
Join groups
See leaderboards
Get notifications of friends’ activity
Post workouts or results on a feed
The Puzzling Fact
A survey question concluded that 48.5% of respondents say "social aspects" help them achieve goals, yet only 21% of respondents use fitness apps for social purposes.
Digging Deeper With User Interviews
I needed to get more insight into these survey results, so I chose 5 participants from those surveys respondents to interview.
User Interview Goals
I wanted to find out the following:
How do and why do users use fitness apps?
How do users stay in touch with friends and family?
What motivates users to set and meet fitness goals?
But, does it work? (Spoiler: not really)
Users aren’t that impressed with social features on fitness apps currently.
1) Notifications feel impersonal, lack connection, and are discouraging.
2) In-person workouts with friends are preferred.
How Might We…
Make this app feel more like an in-person workout?
Use messaging features to engage users?
I went back to the research to to look at what make in-person workouts special and how were users messaging each other in general?
What makes in-person workouts better?
“The energy in the room”
Someone there to encourage them
Getting to see people that don't normally fit into their schedule
Doing the same workout as someone else
How are users messaging with each other in general?
Text
Video Calls
In-Person
I took those key learnings and brainstormed how I can incorporate those into a cohesive design.
Video chat workouts with a friend
According to users, nothing beats in-person encouragement or friendly competition when working towards fitness goals. Video chat workouts bring those real-life elements while incorporating a popular tool for social interaction, FaceTime.
Chat instead of feeds with workout posts from friends.
Fitness app users often text their friends, so I wanted to bring in that element to the design and rely on their normal habits to increase engagement.
Sharing features that mimic popular apps.
Users use social media, texts, and calls in their daily lives, so I brought those concepts to the sharing feature of this app.
Ideating The Key Features
Sketching and Wireframing
Once I created my designs and made it into a clickable prototype, I needed to test more functions of the app to ensure it was usable and logical to a real-users. I focused on these 3 tasks:
Sharing a workout with a friend before doing the workout
Doing the workout, then sharing the results with a friend
Joining and doing a video call workout with a friend
After refining the style, I validated my ideas with usability tests
Test Objectives
Usability
Do participants understand how to operate the sharing and scheduling features?
Perception
What do participants think of the video chat workout and sharing feature?
Engagement
Would participants use these features repeatedly?
After refining the style, I validated my ideas with usability tests
Wins
Video call workouts were a hit even for the user that didn’t normally work out with others.
Loses
Screen size for video fitness classes was a big concern.
Lots of confusion revolved around scheduling a video call workout.
Before
What Changed?
Added a landscape workout video option.
Added the option to cast the video to larger devices.
After
How Did It Help?
Less concern from participants.
Before
What Changed?
Added a notification to chat indicating a new message.
After
How Did It Help?
It didn’t! — Participants were confused and couldn’t find the new message.
I adjusted it a third time after round 2 of testing (shown above).
Before
What Changed?
Adjusted the sharing feature to mimic other popular apps.
Added ability to add different friends.
Added send via text or email option.
Added copy link option.
After
How Did It Help?
Created more guided navigation, which eliminated confusion about sending a message in-app.
Users appreciated the prefilled message with the customization option.
Before
What Changed?
Changed label from "schedule" to "invite friends".
Eliminated the option to schedule a workout alone, and retailored it for scheduling video call workouts.
After
How Did It Help?
Participants more successfully planned and sent a virtual workout invite to their friends.
Looking back, I had a few big takeaways.
Learnings
Using common habits of users and applying it to a new industry, like fitness, was a great way to create engagement that felt natural to users.
Users have very specialized fitness app preferences.
Next Steps
Though these new features were appreciated, tracking and workout quality remained a big factor when deciding whether or not a user continued using a fitness app.
If given more time to complete this project, I would perform an A/B test to assess the difference in engagement.