WinWin Fitness
Creating a win-win solution for users to achieve their fitness goals and help friends and family do the same.
Background
WinWin launched a family and friends health tracking app three years ago. The app allows users within a group (a family or group of friends) to see how others within the group are doing regarding health and fitness.
The Problem
On average user engagement is heavy for the first three weeks then it drops off and soon after users delete the app.
In order to drive engagement and repeat usage, Win-Win approached me to integrate messaging into the app.
My PM sent the following requests:
1. Create the opportunity for users to message each other with health and fitness goals/achievements
2. Create an integrated messaging experience throughout the product drives engagement and repeat usage
The Solution
A three-fold approach to establish a simple and delightful social experience in WinWin Fitness:
- A social network feed, allowing users to connect with new people to create a community of reinforcement and community.
- Quick access to an inbox where users can reply and send new messages to their friends and family.
- The ability to create and invite friends to fitness challenges to encourage users to reach goals alongside one another.
My Role
I conducted research on the psychology of social reinforcement in fitness apps as well as a competitive analysis of fitness app industry leaders. From there, I designed and prototyped low-fidelity screens for the new features of the app and tested them with target users. Lastly, I polished the designs and made adjustments for usability issues, producing finalized high-fidelity screens for the new flows.
Research
Scholarly sources revealed years of experiments and research involving gamification of fitness apps, specifically social competition as most useful for behavioral reinforcement.
In one study revealed social comparison was the driving force for users to continue using fitness apps.
Social rank is a meaningful and straightforward measurement individuals can use to evaluate their activity performance.
A competitive analysis tested key features within four industry leaders in the fitness app market: NikeRunClub, Fitlist, MapMyRun and MyFitnessPal.
Full report can be read here.
Design & Validate
The industry leader analysis revealed opportunity for WinWin to improve the fitness experience by implementing and perfecting features that were missing from other apps.
The three flows that would have the most impact for WinWin’s users were assumed to be:
- Challenges with Friends Flow
- Direct Inbox Flow
- Social Feed Flow
While the Challenges feature was present in both Nike Run Club and MapMyRun, neither executed the second two flows well. A fully functioning Direct Inbox where users can message other users was missing from all apps (NikeRun and MyFitnessPal had inbox features with only alerts from the brand). Only MapMyRun included a social feed.
View all three user flows for WinWin’s social features here.
Wireframes & Testing
I proceeded to sketch out the flows into low-fidelity wireframes for initial user testing. The ability to like, comment and view a users profile is highlighted in the social media wireframes- all to encourage social engagement.
Using Figma, I animated the wireframes into a clickable prototype. Check out the low-fidelity prototype here.
I set out to test the prototype with participants who matched WinWin’s provided description of their target users:
- 18–34 years old
- Very tech-savvy — they are on their phones for several hours a day
- Very budget-conscious
- Messaging and communicating with friends and family is a very important part of their daily lives
The results from this initial testing revealed a number of usability issues ranging from minor aesthetic dislikes to major user frustrations.
Taking this feedback into consideration and making adjustments as needed, I went forward to craft high fidelity screens of the new flows.
Initial High Fidelity Prototype & Testing
Using WinWin’s current screens and color palette as a guide, I refined the ideas from my wireframes into high fidelity screens and a clickable prototype.
Users who participated in WinWin’s first round of high fidelity usability were asked to perform the following tasks:
1. Comment on John Doe’s recent post on the app’s social media feed.
2. ‘Like’ John Doe’s recent post.
3. View John Doe’s profile.
4. Add John Doe as a friend.
5. Create a Challenge and invite your friend John Doe to join.
The five users who participated in this round uncovered another set of issues and recommendations which helped me narrow down a user-centered final design for WinWin’s messaging flow.
Final High Fidelity Screens & Prototype
The most critical changes from the user tested included:
1. Resizing the avatars on the social media feed so that they can be seen easily on mobile screen and
2. Reworking the messaging system to display clearly which messages were sent by the main user and which by the other user.
You can click through the final prototype by clicking here.
Conclusion
WinWin’s initial product was missing that special something that keeps users engaged to a fitness product- a collaborative spirit, a tribe to progress with. Scientific research from the past decade confirmed the hypothesis that psychologically, users become more engaged with fitness apps when there is a social element to the process. Based on the research gathered, I set out to create multiple avenues engagement landscape for WinWin’s users: social media, direct messaging and group challenges.
WinWin had a specific vision for this project: an opportunity for users to message each other with health and fitness achievements and an integrated messaging experience throughout the product that drives engagement and repeat usage. We followed this vision down to the final iteration of the messaging system which pushed for all avenues of social engagement to connect, a messaging system where users can network and engage with group challenges. Through real user feedback, we found the best way to portray messages to users- through well established UI elements and clever integration with other app functions. We hope the users of WinWin and their family and friends enjoy these new features!
