Executive Summary
Plus Ultra Fitness is an app designed for gamers to help nerds become more motivated to workout. In order to do this, the app utilizes a variety of features such as a leaderboard that encourages competition and fun, interactive workouts.
Approach: Goal-Directed Design (GDD)
App Idea: The idea for the app was to combine working out with anime and video games to motivate nerds to workout more.
Objective: The objective for this project was to create an app that used research and user interviews to create an experience that would be pleasing to users, both visually and interaction wise.
Role: Team Leader, Interaction Designer, Researcher
Team Size: Four
Duration: January 2023 - April 2023
Tools: Figma, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Docs, Photoshop
Links:
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Research Report
Introduction
At the beginning of the semester when we were tasked with pitching an app idea, at first I had a completely different idea. However, the more I though about my pitch, the more I realized that I wanted to do something I was actually passionate about. I love gaming a lot and I have been trying to become more consistent with working out. So, the day before I was supposed to present, I messaged my professor and asked him if I could change my pitch. He said yes so I changed my pitch and presented my app idea: Plus Ultra Fitness, a workout app designed for gamers to help motivate them to work out. it utilizes multiple different features to help accomplish this goal such as a competitive leaderboard, a points systems to redeem rewards, and many more. After I presented my pitch, I was named a team leader and our class was split into teams based on our preferences for the app we wanted to work on and the skills we had.
My team was comprised of four people, me as the team leader and my three teammates: Remi Adedara, Shaderia Stewart, and Thomas Carson. Below is a picture of us working together in person. We did not meet in person often as we all lived in different places and were not able to travel too often outside of class time.
For this class, we went through the first four steps of the GDD process from the 4th edition of About Face with some modifications due to the fact that we were doing this for a class. Instead of going through the whole process, we instead went through the Research, Modeling, Requirements, Framework, and Refinement steps. To do this we gathered research and then complied a report, then created a prototype based on the information we had gathered during our research.
This page will go over a detailed explanation of the GDD method, then go over the Research phase, the Modeling Phase, the Requirements phase, the Frameworks phase, the Refinements phase, and finally a conclusion.
GDD Method
Before I can get into the project, I first need to explain what the Goal-Directed Design process is. According to Chapter 1 of Alan Cooper's About Face, GDD is a way of "addressing [a] new kind of behavior-oriented design, providing a complete process for understanding the user's goals, needs and motivations" (Cooper et al., 13). Goal-Directed Design's purpose is to link the design to the user by doing extensive research on how users "actually use products" in order to create a design that fulfills the users goals with said design (Cooper et al., pg 21).
As I explained in my Introduction, this project was done for a class and as a result, we did not go through the entire GDD process and instead focused on the first steps. These steps include:
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Research Phase: This phase allows the team to figure out what the goals of our product are, look at any current products in the same domain, read up on any literature pertaining to our product, determine any constraints our product may have, and finally, interview users and learn their needs and any relevant behaviors in regards to the product
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Modeling Phase: In this phase, the team users the behavioral variables gathered in user interviews to create a persona, a model of a fictitious user whose goals and characteristics will be used for future design decisions.
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Requirements Phase: In this phase, the persona is used to create context scenarios, which is where designers determine how the product is going to be used in the personas life. After these context scenarios are created, then designers can work our the requirements of the app, things that the app needs in order for the user to be able to accomplish their goal.
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Frameworks Phase: In this phase, the designers take their requirements and create a wireframe of their product with key path and validation scenarios. Key path scenarios are what the user is going to be using the most often while validation scenarios are where the designer acknowledges the other parts of the design that need to be included even if the user won't be utilizing them everyday. For example, a home page would be part of a Key Path Scenario while the settings page would be part of the Validation Scenario.
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Refinements Phase: This phase is where the designer takes their wireframe and makes it into a high-fidelity prototype. Not only that, but this phase also has the designers conduct usability tests to see if the design they have created actually accomplishes the goals it has set out for.
Research Phase
The Research Phase is the first and one the most important phases of the Goal-Directed Design process as it allows designers to gather necessary information such as product domain, user goals and needs, and education on any related literature before starting to work on the design.
During this phase, designers conduct Kickoff Meetings, conduct a Literature Review and a Competitive Audit, hold Stakeholder interviews and Subject Matter Expert interviews, and finally hold user interviews. After gathering the research from these various activities, a research report is produced to show the findings of the research to potential stakeholders. Since this project was done for a class, there were not any real stakeholders so the Kickoff Meeting and Stakeholder interviews were done as a team discussion. There were also no Subject Matter Expert interviews conducted. Even though there were no stakeholders, our team still wrote a research report as part of our project requirements for Interaction Design I.
Kickoff Meeting
The first step in the research phase is to conduct a Kickoff meeting, which is an "opportunity for designers to ask initial key questions" of the products stakeholders in order for the designers and stakeholders to be on the same page about the details of the product. As I stated above, the project was being done for a class and as a result there were no stakeholders. Instead, our team sat down and discussed the questions that would normally be asked during a kickoff meeting.
By doing this, my team determined that the project will be a fitness app for nerds, with a working title of “Plus Ultra Fitness" and our main users would be anyone who enjoys video games or nerdy things in general that wants to workout and start a healthier lifestyle. We also determined that current apps failed to employ a good reward system for working out, therefore, in order for our app to succeed, we need to provide a reward system that will promote consistency in user’s work out routine. To the left I have included an image of our teams Kickoff Meeting and below is a photo of our team holding this meeting.
Literature Review
In the GDD process, designers conduct a literature review to use as a "basis for developing questions to ask stakeholders" (Cooper et al., pg 38). The literature review is also important as it allows for designers to better understand the domain of the product.
For our app, my team did research on the different types of motivation, why fitness apps are beneficial to motivation, the reasons people quit working out, what makes video games fun, and the benefits of making working out fun.
The key takeaways from our lit review were:
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The qualitative effect intrinsic motivation has on performance will help users feel more motivated when working out, and the quantitative effect extrinsic motivation has will ensure users’ consistency when using our app.
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When users face unforeseen circumstances such as working long hours, caring for children, or experiencing physical changes, their motivation to exercise decreases.
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Fitness apps that are gamified tend to show an increase in usage, and it was reported that users were more likely to continue using the gamified app.
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Achievement and competition are the most important factors when determining the enjoyment of video games.
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Adding new challenges to one’s routine can increase satisfaction, as gaining new skills promotes intrinsic motivation to keep going.
Competitive Audit
Alongside the literature review, our team completed a competitor audit. Cooper writes that this section is done in order to “familiarize the team with the strengths and limitations of what is currently available” (Cooper et al, 2014, 38).With the vast amount of fitness apps that are out there, our team really focused on finding apps that fit the same demographic as ours in order to get better understanding of what the market looked like and what faults our competitors had that we could fix. For our competitive audit we looked at four different competitors: Nerd Fitness, Superhero Jacked, Playfitt and Peloton. All of these apps are pretty well thought out and have cool features that make them enjoyable. However, all of them had the same problem: the price tag that came along with the app. To the left I have included the membership prices for Superhero Jacked, a website that also has a mobile app that is locked behind a pay wall. With these faults in mind, our team decided that we wanted to discover other ways for our app to turn a profit without requiring the user to pay a large sum of money for a membership.
Stakeholder Interviews
The last thing the team needed to do before we conducted any user research was hold stakeholder interviews that give designers the vision for the product, a look at what users the stakeholders believe will be using the product, constraints and opportunities for the product, and business drivers. As a reminder, since this project was part of a class there are no actual stakeholders and all responses came from a team meeting where we took on the role of the stakeholders. These statements were also included as part of the Kickoff meeting that was conducted.
During our stakeholder interviews, our design team learned several important insights on our product that will be essential as we move forward:
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Our main user is anyone that enjoys video games and/or anime and wants to work out but struggles to stay motivated.
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Our product will be interactive to increase user engagement, and also employ a video game aesthetic to fit the theme of the app.
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In order for our product to be successful, we have to keep users engaged by supplying a reward system, which will incentivize them to keep coming back to our app.
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Our product intends to solve the issue of people lacking the motivation to go to the gym by including incentives to keep the habit.
User Interviews
The last and one of the more important steps in the Research phase is the user interviews as users are "the main focus of the design effort" (Cooper et al., 42). From user interviews we were able to better understand our products context of use along with the goals the user would want to accomplish with our product and the ways the current market is unable to fully satisfy these goals.
Before we began looking for people to interview, our team did an initial persona hypothesis in order to define what type of person we were looking to interview for our app. We started this process by determining that we had one user type: people who are seeking a new, entertaining app to keep them engaged and motivated to work out. We also looked at the different needs that might arise out of the user type, and established that some people might prefer or are restricted to working out at home, so our app also needed to offer options for that.
After we determined the ideal interviewee for our user interviews, each member of the team reached out and brought at least one person to interview. We ended up with 6 interviewees in total, with 2 identifying as female and 4 identifying as male, each with different levels of exercise experience. After having each of them sign a consent form, we started a call with each person either on Discord or Zoom and asked them several questions about their workout habits, gaming habits, and general life situation. Below are some images from our user interviews. More than half of our interviewees declined to have their cameras on for the interviews or did not have a camera available which is why there are only a few photos.
To better comprehend our interviews, we did an affinity mapping exercise where we grouped important details of each interview that shared similar themes. The overarching topics were:
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Motivation
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Setbacks
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App Preferences
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Goals
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Workout Preferences
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Gaming/Free Time
With these topics, we were able to see patterns easily and found that many of our interviewees found it hard to want to workout after being at work or school all day. Not only that but we also gathered information on the frustrations they had with already existing fitness apps, stating that they were too expensive and often did not have all the features needed to meet certain goals. Not only that but most of our interviewees expressed a great passion for gaming and enjoyed the satisfaction that came along with achieving an in-game goal or winning a competition and they expressed a desire to feel the same about working out.
With all of these notes in mind, our team then moved from the Research phase to the Modeling Phase where we went through the steps of making our primary persona.
User Interviews
With the Research Phase done, the team began the Modeling Phase. The first step in the Modeling Phase is to take our user interviews and group them by role. Our team determined that we only had one role, gamers that have an interest in working out. After that, our team discussed a variety of behavioral variables that we observed in our interviews. These were then used to map our subjects onto continuums which allowed us to determine patterns among the various interviewees.
The main pattern we saw was that interviewees 1, 5, and 6 were often grouped together as shown on the left. We determined that this group was less motivated than the rest, and wrote down the behavioral characteristics with descriptions and goals that would later be used to create our primary persona. A persona is the "composite archetype based on behavioral patterns uncovered during the course of our research" and is the tool that helps designers "determine what the product should do and how it should behave" (Cooper et al., 62, 64). Now, you will meet our persona, Tylar, who is the personification of interviewees 1, 5, and 6, and our ideal main user.
Since we only had one user type, we only had one persona, our primary persona, who would be used in the rest of the GDD phases to make design decisions. With the persona being created, the modeling phase was wrapped up and our team wrote our Research Report before we moved onto the next phase: the Requirements Phase.
Requirements Phase
With the Research and Modeling phases done, our team moved on to the Requirements phase which has 5 main steps: "create problem and vision statements, explore/brainstorm, identify persona expectations, construct context scenarios, and identify design requirements. For our problem and vision statements, we looked back at our Kickoff meeting and stakeholder interviews where we determined our problem statement that, in short, states the goal of our app and the shortcomings of the other apps in the domain. Then, we took the problem statement and inverted it to create our vision statement. Our vision statement says that the app Plus Ultra Fitness was to be designed to help users keep the motivation to workout by creating workouts that are interactive, rewarding, and competitive without the issue of a pay wall. After we determined our problem and vision statements, our team began to brainstorm different ideas for what we wanted the app to look like. To the left is a screenshot of our brainstorming activity conducted on FigJam. After we wrote out all of our ideas, we then moved onto the next step: coming up with a context scenario
Context Scenario
Before our team determined the persona expectations and requirements, our team needed to determine the context scenario. A context scenario "tells the story of a particular user persona...using the future version of your product in a way that is most typical for that persona (Cooper et al., pg 113). To the left you will see our personas context scenario that was used to work on the requirements for the app. With the context scenarios completed, my team began to write out the various requirements that our persona would need to complete his goals. Alongside the persona requirements, my team also determined some general requirements that would be needed for the app to function like a normal app. I have included an image of the requirements my team determined in this phase. After my team determined these various requirements for the app, we then began to work on creating our low-fidelity wireframe that shows our key path and validation scenarios.
Frameworks Phase
With the requirements of our app determined, my team began to work on a low-fidelity wireframe. For the wireframe, we needed to show our key path scenarios and our validation scenarios. A key path scenarios "describes how the persona interacts with the product" while validation scenarios are "the less frequent or less important interactions" within our app (Cooper et al., pg 128, 130). For our wireframe, my team went through our requirements and constructed our key path scenarios first and then worked on the validation scenarios last. Below is an image of our wireframe with various lines connected the different frames, indicating our key path and validation scenarios.
With our wireframe completed, my team then began to work on the high-fidelity prototype that would be our final piece of this project. For this prototype we chose to base it on an iPhone as most of our team wanted to do an iPhone base. Originally, our app included lots of glow effects and bright neon colors which, during our Refinement phase, saw a lot of change. Below, one of the original onboarding screens can be seen where we had a lot of neon on the page.
Refinement Phase
Once our team had gotten a decent bit of the prototype done, we determined that we needed to conduct some usability tests to determine anything that needed to be changed. We conducted three usability tests and they gave us a lot of insight into changes that could be made.
The most important points were that we needed to bring down the glow on every page as it was making the app too overwhelming visually. Not only that but we also needed to change the way we were prototyping and add some easier interactions such as swiping between screens.
For example, our original workout pages had a lot on the page and was very visually loud. As this is a workout app, the most important feature is the workout section. As a result, our team made sure that we refined this section a lot and made it look less loud and toned down a lot of the glow while still keeping it interesting. The first two photos below show the original design of the workouts and the last two show the final design. If you want to view the entire project, you can view it on our Figma page.
Conclusion
This project took the entire semester to complete and took a lot of work and late nights from my team to finish. Even though it was a lot of work, I ended up learning so much and got to put what I was learning into practice instead of memorizing some info and taking a test. I learned that there is a lot more to design than just aesthetics. So much research and testing and work has to be done before a product is even close to being completed. Not only that but this project made me appreciate leaders so much. Being a team leader is hard but in the end it was really rewarding as everything came together and my team got to see our project as it was presented to the class.
Even though there were some hiccups throughout the process, in the end, my team worked really hard to get things done and I am really grateful for the team I was given. We were able to get things done in a timely manner and were able to take user feedback on our prototype and make changes to make our app more user friendly.
This project made me that much more excited about my major and my future career in Interaction Design. If I were to do the project again, I would like to experience being a team member now that I have the experience of being a team leader. I would definitely make an effort to communicate more and encourage more discussion in meetings.
Works Cited
Cooper, Alan & Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel. 2014. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, 4th Edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Press.