USER SURVEY

What do users want?

I wanted to gauge how people use fitness tracking apps. Not wearables, but apps that measure walking, hiking, biking, running and so on. I originally headed into this project hoping to create a running app. But I left the survey open to people who do more than run. It turns out people who even run a majority of the days of the week want MORE exercises in their app. So the app becomes more than just running and walking.

What's the competition like?

As my knowledge grew about what users were looking for, I took a deep dive into the competition. I focused on Strava, MapMyRun and Apple’s activity app. Each app offered something different, but each app really exceled in what they were offering.

User Personas

I took another look at the results from the user survey and noted what the competition offers and doesn't and I was able to settle on three user personas: The Expert, The Moderate and the Newbie. I wanted to be able to target a multitude of people without straying away from the ultimate goal of building an easy to use fitness tracker.

User flows

I created user flows based on several user stories. I took a look at the high priority user stories and created flows for those, as those flows would be the most important to the app.

Wireframes

In previous projects, I felt as if I had rushed through the sketching process for my wireframes. This time around I was deliberate. I wanted to make sure things worked. I know that wireframes change. The Actively app did change based on logistics and user testing. But I was careful in the original process to try and get things close to how they would end up, with some flexibility of course.

Branding

Defining what the app would be was probably the hardest part of this project. I struggled to find a name and even come up with a logo (the original flame was too close to the Tinder logo). The name came by chance. I was mindmapping and getting a little frustrated when I told someone that I was just sitting there, actively trying to come up with a name for my fitness app. The word actively stuck with me. The whole point of this app is to get people active, to get them actively conscious of the lifestyle choices they are making. The name made sense and it stuck.

High Fidelity mockups

I created high fidelity prototypes of my design that aligned with the brand styles I created. I made adjustments to the style guide and my wireframes as I went along based on what worked and what didn’t during the usability testing.

View mockups

Conclusion + what I learned

I was honestly surprised I ended up making a fitness tracker. I went into it hoping to make a very focused running app. I had been running a lot and was getting by the different apps that I was using to track my runs. But when I took my survey to the people, their answers surprised me. It changed the scope of my project, and it did so without complaint from me. There are so many things I like about specific apps, and having all the great things from each app in one singular app could be really useful.

As this was my second project, I was a little more aware of how users would and should interact with designs. But with that being said, I still missed a lot of things that the users found in tests. I need to reiterate this again, but users are really good at finding holes in designs. One of the things I noticed in the responses to the survey, was this sense of community that people who run or hike or bike want to feel. It was low on my user stories, and I included it in the prototype -- although it wasn’t clickable -- but I included sort of a challenges tab.

With more time I would have liked to develop that -- where users can challenge each other and there are monthly challenges for all users. Motivating each other and yourself is such a big part of the app.