overview

Grow is a personal fitness companion focused on your body’s health conditions & your individual exercise preferences.

We developed this app to address the needs of users with physically limiting health conditions.

ROLE: UX Designer

TEAM: Josh S, Monica F.

RESEARCH

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We researched fitness apps that had the most active users and placed them on a competitive matrix to compare them on their level of personalization and their focus on maintaining motivation to exercise.

The main competitors include: Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, and Samsung Health.

These apps had a focus on activity tracking & generic workout recommendations and coaching meant to motivate their users to work out.

Competitor apps did NOT attempt to personalize their content by catering to users’ specific needs or pain points.

To better understand our users’ own perspectives, we conducted user research.

UNDERSTANDING USER NEEDS

We conducted user interviews to understand users’ motivations to exercise, their individual health limitations, and how they engaged with mobile platforms. 

RESEARCH GOALS

WHAT USERS TOLD US

“I have protruding discs so I shouldn't be doing heavy weights. If someone could tell me which [exercises] are OK and how to do them correctly, I would feel more safe.”

SAFETY

User interviews revealed that because users lacked the resources to develop personalized workout plans, they often felt unsafe while exercising, which also contributed to their lack of motivation to maintain a consistent fitness routine

BRAND CREDIBILITY

Another important point was that users trust brands from well-known companies and health websites such as WebMD.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This insight confirmed that there is an opportunity for us to focus on a specific target audience — users with physical health limitations — and help them to develop safe fitness routines. 

EMPATHIZING WITH THE USER

THE USER PERSONA

Meet Gabby, a young professional and
ex-athlete who represents our target users.

GABBY’S PAIN POINTS

1. Pain from a chronic knee condition

2. Lack of motivation to maintain a consistent fitness routine
   

Gabby’s Main Goal

Develop healthier & safer fitness habits despite her chronic knee pain.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

DESIGN

MEETING GABBY’S NEEDS

To address the insecurity users with limiting physical conditions feel when exercising, we came up with three key features to help us simplify and inform the development of personalized fitness plans. 

KEY FEATURES

BRAND AND PARTNERSHIP

Building Trust & Vision

To foster trust with our users, we needed to ensure that workout recommendations were safe and medically approved.

We also needed to be able to reassure users that their medical data would remain confidential.

In order to guarantee that our app would provide medically accurate information as well as secure data and and privacy management, we decided to partner with Oscar Health, a mobile first company with a similar target audience and established credibility.

To reflect the personal development this app will help to bring our users, we named it Grow. 

The MVP

The Grow Mobile App,
your personal fitness companion

Onboarding Video Walk-through

Usability Testing

Before designing the hi-fi version of this app, we wanted to learn if users understood the purpose and functionality of the app and if they found the experience to be intuitive and user friendly. To ensure our design was user-centric, we conducted usability tests using mid-fidelity prototypes, made in Sketch and Invision.

Test results confirmed the user friendly design of the Onboarding feature so we proceeded to design hi-fidelity wireframes.

5/5 test participants successfully completed
the Onboarding task

Participants took between 22 and 52 seconds to complete the task. As this was just a test, we expect Onboarding to take at least a few more minutes depending on user input. 

We did consider that some users would be put off by the length of the survey questions so we added a “Skip” option to the Onboarding Survey in the hi-fi version of the app as is shown in the walk-through video.

PHASE 2 PREVIEW

GETTING USERS TO USE THE APP - Calendar and Mood Tracker

In the second phase of Grow’s development, we decided to tackle the motivation aspect of developing a consistent exercise routine.

To address the challenges users face when other priorities or feelings interfere with their desire to maintain healthy lifestyles, we design the below features — a calendar with personalized push notifications and automatic scheduling, and a mood tracker to track the emotional benefits of exercise,