Gymbag
User Research, Prototyping
Project Overview
Group Members: Rick Borges, Mary Bungum, Ian Chin, Julie Rochelle
The idea of GymBag began as a data collection application for gym users. I was getting increasingly inconvenienced by having to carry around my notebook at the gym to record my progress. I wondered why nobody had made a device/app that recorded more than my daily step count or how long my heart-rate was in a specific range. My ideal app needed to understand what exercise was being performed (including weight lifting) and record this data with little to no manual input.
After discovering other areas of concern for multiple types of gym users, GymBag morphed into a tool to track user progress as well as educate and assist users in their fitness and nutrition goals.
After discovering other areas of concern for multiple types of gym users, GymBag morphed into a tool to track user progress as well as educate and assist users in their fitness and nutrition goals.
My Role: All team members took part in analyzing all parts of the project. My individual contributions to this project include: conducted user interviews, setup and created Stormboard content, assisted in creating requirements and persona spectrums, designed and constructed wireframes, produced InVision prototype for usability tests, and conducted usability tests.
Contextual Inquiry
After performing 8 interviews, focusing on how users perform tasks similar to the perspective functions of GymBag, we combined our observations and divided them into seven distinct themes:
Click image to view each theme
- Passive Data Collection – users don’t want to manually input data, ever.
- Data Interpretation – explain data results in layman's terms.
- Community – allow users to share data in ways that are motivational to them.
- Looking Good – enough said…
- Nutrition Tracking – abs are made in the kitchen, right?
- App Equipment – connect to a wearable device, let’s stop carrying our phones around the gym.
- Goal Tracking– track your achievements however you like, or let GymBag make some suggestions.
Requirements & Personas
These themes assisted us in uncovering the requirements for Gymbag as well as creating two distinct user personas.
- Accessible for novice and experienced gym users.
- No need for active data input, automatically inputs user activity.
- Design customized workouts for optimum health, strength, and preferred appearance based on individual user data.
- Create a social fitness community to boost motivation and inspire users to stick to their workouts.
Click image to view both personas
User Scenarios
Two user scenarios were created to guide us in developing a prototype, which we then used to perform usability evaluations.
Account Setup
Isabel
Expert Gym User
- Showcases how Gymbag tailors the user’s workout plan based on the data obtained.
- Highlights the instructed fitness evaluation that ties in with the Gymbag wearable.
Workout Personalization
Robert
Novice Gym User
- Demonstrates the main goal of Gymbag, to assist user's in achieving their fitness goals.
- Emphasizes GymBag's ability to assist those who are new to fitness and are in need of personalized workout instructions.
Usability Evaluation
To perform usability evaluations we created a navigable prototype in InVision. We evaluated 8 subjects on 5 tasks to measure:
Scenario 1: Account Setup
The first task focuses on the account setup scenario. We asked each of our subjects to go through the 6 screens below and tell us what they believed would be achieved on each screen and if they would recommend any changes.
Click image to view each screen
Scenario 2: Workout Personalization
The remaining 4 tasks focus on:
- Dashboard content
- Training plan content and interaction with the navigation menu
- Calendar section under the training plan
- Daily Workout section under the training plan
Click image to view each screen
Usability Evaluation Results
Positive feedback:
- Users were able to move through tasks efficiently with few errors.
- Navigation design led to ease of use.
- Radio buttons, graphs and calendar conventions helped convey Gymbag's primary purpose; tracking fitness goals.
Areas to work on:
- Several screens lacked units of measurements for data. This lead to a lack of understanding the meaning of the presented numbers.
- Sliders and circle graphs for data input led to confusion.
