Accountability and community is key
In today's world, the smartphone holds a lot of power in how we navigate our daily lives. For the majority of us, it dictates our routines, influences our social interactions, and fuels our motivation (or lack thereof). Studies show that our attention spans are slowly diminishing as social media platforms continuously shorten their content to keep us engaged in a fast-paced digital landscape. In fact, short-form content has emerged as the most effective marketing strategy of our time. Ironically, while we crave immediate gratification, it often leads to a struggle with longer-term commitments like fitness and healthy habits.
Problem?
New individuals entering the fitness journey often feel overwhelmed and struggle to create manageable daily routines for establishing healthy habits. This challenge contributes to a concerning trend where new users experience a 28% drop in retention of health and fitness apps by the end of their first month.
Timeline
Research
Competitive Analysis
The aim of this analysis is to explore the integration of fitness applications and habit trackers into a single cohesive platform that emphasizes community engagement and gamification to enhance user motivation and adherence. This study seeks to understand the user needs and challenges related to combining these functionalities to create a unified experience that supports fitness and habit development through social and interactive elements.
User Interviews
The primary aim of these user interviews is to collect in-depth insights into users' experiences with fitness mobile applications, with a specific focus on the accessibility of resources and the effectiveness of community features. This information will help inform the development of improved app functionalities that cater to diverse user needs while fostering an inclusive and supportive community environment.
Findings
Complex Onboarding Process: New users often find the initial setup and registration process overly complicated, leading to early abandonment and contributing to high churn rates.
Lack of Personalization: Participants express dissatisfaction with the lack of personalized content and recommendations, which results in a lack of engagement and disconnection from their personal fitness goals.
Insufficient Motivation and Rewards: Users highlight a deficiency in motivational features, such as gamification and rewards systems, which could encourage ongoing app usage by providing incentives for achieving milestones.
Overwhelming Amount of Information: The presence of too much information and too many features in the app without clear guidance often overwhelms new users, causing them to discontinue use.
Limited Social Interaction Features: There is a noted absence of robust social interaction functionalities, which new users believe would create a community experience and contribute to sustained user engagement.
User Personas
For the personas, I wanted to focus on two key user types: the regular gym-goer and the personal trainer. By developing detailed personas, it would aim to enhance user-centered design strategies, optimize gym facilities and services, and improve user engagement and satisfaction.
Journey Map
With this scenario, it will illustrate the typical path a user like Jake might take when interacting with the HealthyHive, which focuses on community, habit tracking, and gamification. These map highlights Jake's needs, motivations, and potential pain points at each stage—onboarding, exploration, engagement, and loyalty—by identify opportunities to enhance user satisfaction and retention by aligning the app's features with user expectations.
Current State
Future State
Wireframes
High Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
The usability study conducted through Useberry for HiveHub aims to evaluate the effectiveness of its habit tracking and community features by observing user interactions with an interactive prototype. This study focuses on assessing the user interface and experience, ensuring they meet user needs and expectations. Participants from the target audience complete specific tasks related to these features, gathering both quantitative data, such as task completion rates, and qualitative insights.
Key Tasks:
Editing the habit widget
Navigating through the application
Interacting with the users in the social page & their Hive community
Results: 83% Completion Rate, 17% Drop rate, Average time: 9 min 33.4s
Takeaways:
Reward Icon placement took most participants longer to discover with an overall usability score of 3 out 5.
Participant found it easy to locate Hive users.
50% of participants were initially confused by the need to press multiple buttons to complete an action, suggesting it to be one single function.
Challenges
During the initial phase, I faced several challenges related to time management. To address these issues, there is a need to enhance my research planning and development skills. Another challenge involved prioritizing the overarching design features over the micro-interactions.
Final thoughts…
I gained valuable insights into the research aspect of UX, which exposed me to various opportunities for growth as a designer in this field. This experience highlighted specific areas where I can improve and further develop my skills. Through this exposure, I am now better equipped to enhance my approach and methodologies in future projects.