2021
TEAM
Isabella – Senior UX/UI Designer
Gabriella Neves – Senior Designer
Eduardo Risi – Senior Designer
Juliana Neves – Junior Designer
Igor Saraiva – Senior Product Designer
Isabella – Senior UX/UI Designer
Gabriella Neves – Senior Designer
Eduardo Risi – Senior Designer
Juliana Neves – Junior Designer
Igor Saraiva – Senior Product Designer
User Research · Workshop Facilitation · UI Design · Rapid Prototyping · Product Management
What
Sixapp is a fitness app that uses social connections as a way to keep users engaged and motivated in their exercises. Its concept was created after three weeks of immersion, the study of the current market, and a design sprint.
Why
We needed to craft and define key features of a new fitness app for a client that already owned a gym based in Brasília, Brazil. The client's particular need was to deliver online fitness classes during COVID-19 lockdowns. The project challenge was to develop an app idea that could differentiate itself from others currently available in the Brazilian market by tackling users' pain points while exercising at home.
How
1) Week one
In the first week we made an immersion process to understand:
• The people and potential users of the app.
• Brazilian and international current fitness apps market.
• The client's business and requirements.
UNDERSTANDING THE CLIENTS BUSINESS
• CSD matrix
• Visual Moodboard
To understand our client business and his vision of the project, we conducted a workshop with a design thinking approach. This workshop consisted of a CSD (certainties, suppositions, and doubts) Matrix where we were able to access and learn vital aspects of the project and come up with the main questions we wanted to answer by the end of the first week of immersion.
At this stage, we also analyzed the visual identity already established for the app brand. Based on this study, I was able to make a visual mood board with some directions and considerations for later applications on the user interface.
Mood board built for the app based on the brand visual identity
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
• Qualitative Research
• Quantitative Research
• Personas
To understand the users, we conducted user research to learn more about the necessities, pain points, and motivations of people concerning their exercise habits during the pandemic lockdown. We wanted to understand what was the impact of the pandemic on their fitness habits and what kinds of apps or tools they used to exercise at home. We created a quantitative questionnaire and an interview script to conduct remote semi-structured interviews. This research helped the team create user personas that guided us throughout the next phases of the project.
UNDERSTANDING THE MARKET
• Benchmarking
• Competitor analysis
• Market Trend analysis
To understand the market, we studied and compared key features and characteristics from some of the most prominent fitness apps available in Brazil and internationally. It was crucial to pay attention to user's reviews on their store pages and also take a closer look at the ones that were most used by our personas as shown in our user research. We also consumed some analyses made by specialists on the effect of the pandemic in the fitness market and macro trends in fitness and health.
2) WEEK TWO
After the immersion week, we conducted a remote design sprint with the participation of the design team, the client, and two of his business partners. In the design sprint, during five days, we aligned all our knowledge about the project, defined the focus of the sprint, sketched and voted on ideas, constructed a prototype, and finally, validated it with our end users. My role was to be the facilitator of the sprint while also being in charge of conducting the final test with the users and constructing the prototype.
Mapping exercise of design sprint day one made on Mural
Our main sprint questions were:
- How can we keep users motivated to not give up on exercises at home?
- How can we differentiate our product from others in the Brazilian Market?
The idea most voted for was prototyped and consisted of engaging users with challenges made by friends and family. Users would participate in competitions or cooperate with friends as fitness buddies to exercise at home. They could send a review of the exercise later to their friend, telling how difficult, enjoyable, or easy it was.
Most voted ideias on day 2
VALIDATING THE IDEA WITH USERS
We later invited 5 participants who matched our defined persona to interact with a prototype. Our main objective with this activity was to collect qualitative feedback regarding the app's social challenge aspect and also identify potential usability issues that could be refined at later stages.
Prototype made on Figma for the design sprint test
3) WEEK THREE
In the final week of the project, I constructed a report with the most valuable findings of the design sprint. By this time, we already had enough knowledge to build a user story map containing key features of the app, backlog prioritization, and possible release versions. In this stage, we also helped the client visualize the next steps by delivering a product roadmap.
Report with feedback collected on user testing day
User story mapping made on Miro with key features
