What I learned after doing my first User Experience Design project

Task

I wanted to create a mobile app that would help users reach their fitness goals. Through user research, exploration of potential competing apps, sketching a storyboard, paper prototyping, user testing, and iterations, my goal was to address the pain points by assisting users to better plan and prepare for a workout the night before.

User Interviews

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Without having picked a solid problem statement, I asked three different users the following open-ended questions:

• What is your fitness goal?
• What are the problems/obstacles you experience on a daily basis?
• What is your current fitness routine?
• What tools do you use to help you reach your fitness goal?

I wanted to find out how a mobile app could help change their habits.

My first interviewee was Holly, and I asked her the widest variety of questions. After carefully selecting my questions and listening to her answers, I proceeded to ask Jaza and Simon the smaller set of questions listed above. They all had different answers, but they also all had similar pain points.

Post-Interview Notes

After conducting user research, some trends emerged.

All three users expressed difficulties in planning and committing to their scheduled workout time, if any. Two of the three users also mentioned that the morning time was difficult because of “lack of motivation” as well as “not a morning person.” I concluded that this could be solved by better preparing for a morning workout. Almost everyone has a busy schedule, but everyone should have the extra time to wake up early and get a workout done if they plan ahead.

Hypothesizing

Quickly, I wrote out only seven possible solutions for helping a user plan a time of day to exercise and commit. I thought of simple, easy tasks that my users could add to their routine to help them get closer to their fitness goals, including setting reminders, announcing to friends on social media about fitness goals, picking a friend to hold user accountable, options to contact friends to exercise with, keeping a tracker to note number of days in a row with exercise, and keeping a night time checklist to exercise first thing in the morning. With the little time we had left, I decided that the night time checklist idea was good enough to test.

Competitive Analysis ?

The first popular fitness app that comes to mind is MyFitnessPal, a calorie/exercise tracker. This app was mentioned by one of the users in my research. This particular app is useful for logging but does not have any planning or scheduling features, so I did not mention this in my presentation. Another popular fitness app is FitBit, which tracks calories burned and activity done. Similar to MFP, this app is useful but does not have planning or scheduling features either. With the lack of similar apps that I could consider competing apps, I began to question the quality of my solution idea. With my work experience as a personal trainer, as well as my own personal experience as a previous bodybuilding competitor, I remembered my thoughts about fitness and my beliefs that anyone can achieve their fitness goals if they motivate themselves in the way that works individually for them. I had to let my beliefs go to proceed with the problem statement I chose, focusing on simply planning and committing, as I learned from user research.

Solution

I sketched a storyboard to illustrate the user, sitting at home in the evening, mentally beating himself up about another day gone without exercise, considering to give working out in the morning another shot. The app guides the user to prepare a workout outfit, breakfast for the following morning, and the outfit for the rest of the day.

With the limited time, I skipped the user flow process and went directly into creating a paper prototype.

This app included a night time alert, prompting the user to agree to a workout the next day and to prepare for it. The app proceeds to display two checklists, one for a workout outfit and one for the breakfast meal. Then the app proceeds to a screen with three alarms: one for waking up, one for the beginning of the workout, and one for the end. After this, the user can sleep, waking up to the first alarm the next morning and receiving the alarm notifications for the beginning and end of workout.

User Testing

I realized immediately that I had to make changes to my prototype. The first screen prompting the user to get ready for the workout the next morning included two options: OK and Cancel.

One of my users hit cancel!

Another tester expressed that he felt limited with the few options listed on the breakfast checklist screen. In addition, another tester looked confused with the three different alarms to be set.

Despite these problems, I believed my simple app had potential to help these users come closer to completing their scheduled workouts.

I did not have time to include these iterations, but I plan to expand more on giving more options in the checklists, and less options in the initial preparation screen.

Key Learnings

• Asking the right questions in user research is key. I asked everyone the same questions, but I realized later that I should have asked more questions to get an idea of the context. Ie. What apps do you use, if any, to assist in planning the fitness part of your day? When do you use these apps? etc.
• Instead of focusing on pain points, I wrote down three memorable points in the user research. This affected the quality of my affinity diagram and therefore affected the quality of my problem statement.

• I did not hypothesize and explore possible solutions enough. I cannot censor my ideas and block my own thoughts.
• Making the time for the user flow process definitely could have helped me produce a better design initially.
• Having a better understanding of the entire design process and practicing delivering the presentation will make for a better presentation.