Ascent

Fitness for Adventure Concept
Project Overview
Ascent provides a workout program designed help users improve with a chosen fitness activity.
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Our brief contained some assumptions that millennials have more of an appetite for adventure, risk-taking, and specialized fitness experiences, however our research showed millennials work out to improve their fun weekend activities and were driven by social activity, not by risk.

On a team of 3, I worked with users to craft a fitness application that ties into their already present motivation.
Project Focus
  • Expanding fitness motivation in the form of fun, accomplishment, and connection fitness provides.
  • Providing a flexible program to accommodate a wide range of users.
  • Supporting adventurous activities through uncomplicated programs.

The Challenge

Problem statement

Busy fitness focused millennials seek motivation and guidance in their weekly fitness routines so they can experience more adventurous, social activities on their anticipated days off. 

Problem space:

Motivation
Uniqueness
Community
Trustworthy
‍Inspire and push to achieve health and fitness goals.
‍Embrace the adventurous side of fitness. Different and thrilling.
‍Strong bonds with fellow exercisers. A sense of connection. A feeling of locality.
Users trust the product and its offerings.

The Solution

A workout application where users are given a fitness program for their preferred weekend activity.
Users workout during the week so they can perform well on their adventures, and that the reason they looked forward to the weekend activities is it is both social and active.
A clean and short introduction to the application that can be skipped
Being able to build the workout ladder that works best for our users
Connecting with friends through activities and building new relationships
Key Insights
  • Choosing which sports they cared about
  • Not a lot of choices - users want to get going and work out
  • Skill improvement was very motivating
  • Group activities built into the program to keep it rewarding
  • Putting fitness for their outdoors activities was motivating to our users

The Research

Based on our user interviews we had two types of users the dedicated athlete and the socially driven one.
  • Social Activity - ‍Social environment during the physical activity was an important factor. Adds camaraderie, encouragement and inspiration to their physical activity
  • Emotional Takeaways - emotional experiences, like relationship building and sense of accomplishments through physical activities fed into their enjoyment.
  • Activity Schedule - having a value distinction between work day exercise and day off exercise. Day off exercise is more enjoyable and has higher value and work day exercise is for creating health to support day off exercise.
“I think the motivation is there because, you know, this [Peleton] is great. It's keeping me in shape to do mountain biking that I really enjoy.” - Garret, Age 34

Personas

Mika represented our younger more active demographic. She choses to be active because she feels like she "should" instead of being motivated because she finds it fun.
Todd was our user who is active for purely social reasons and wants to improve his athletic ability - but only in the context of his social physical activities.

Achievement

Multi-Media

Ladder

Skill Based

Social

Insights

Simplicity

Users liked how quickly they could get to a ladder that matched their activity. Overall users wanted to see activities they cared about and have control over what the app provided for their fitness.

Connection to Friends

Users share in multiple ways and want flexibility to connect through events and activities. Adding group activities to weekly was well received. Control over social, who is it shared with and how do I stay connected?

Improving Skills

Users enjoyed the customization offered through skill collection and were motivated by working at a new skill. They also wanted individual levels for their relative skill level.

Adjusting Schedule

The manipulation of the schedule was highly confusing and needed a major redesign to ensure clarity for users. Minimalistic - users don’t want a lot of choice or have too much to click, when things are chosen they want selections to go away.

Card Sort

Simplicity and quick being incredibly important to our users we wanted to know where users expected to find each feature.

Handoff

Annotated wireframes

Annotating the application pages to ensure a smooth hand off to UI and future developers.

As our main pillar the ladder was a key frame to include the interactions for.
Annotating the on-boarding as this is the entry point for users into the converged design

Reflections

Insights

  1. A huge motivating factor nearly all our users cited in their fitness activities was music, how could we use this information?
  2. We focused on an MVP to iterate as quickly as possible thus had fitness programs pre-populated, however in our research users had fit friends they wanted to copy their programs. What would be the best way to incorporate user generated content?

What would I do differently?

Narrow down the offerings and research what sports to offer to our user base. We chose to offer all but I think this diluted our findings as I would have loved to know about the sports people want to improve not just how to best have them interact with improvement.
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ritalouisefriendly@gmail.com
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