Fitness Pirates — designing a gym administration app: UI/UX case study
Context 💫
Post-covid era has brought us one-step closer to our health, fitness and well-being. Today, we see people hitting the gyms, indulging themselves in yoga/pilates and taking out time for themselves everyday to ensure they stay fit mentally and physically. When we indulge ourselves in some sort of activity, we start to observe things and patterns around. Talking about gyms, we observe the posture forms, machines and little things that surround us there.
I observed one such thing! 💡 An old-school data entry register that has data scattered all over the page! 👎 Something very similar to this :
Now, have you ever wondered, how difficult it becomes for the manager or the owner of the fitness center to keep a track of all the data : bookings, revenue, due dates? Scary! Right? 🤯
Problem Statement 👾
Creating an app that helps fitness centers’ owners/managers to maintain a detailed record of Bookings and Revenue in order to curb the traditional methods of going through pages.
For this problem statement, I decided to work on the business side of this fitness center, Fitness Pirates, that has three domains of workouts : Yoga, Gym and Zumba. The main goal behind this product is to make things easier for the managers to -
- Problem 1 : Manage bookings All bookings and member information at one place which makes it easier to manage.
- Problem 2 : Acknowledge pending renewals Notifying the manager to take action on payment due by members. ****
- Problem 3 : Checkout member feedbacks A space that stores all the member feedbacks and allows the manager to take certain actions.
- Problem 4 : Analyse revenue Record and analyse revenue generation that happens across the three domains.
Goal of the app 🎯
- Simplify the management of bookings and revenue.
- All record related information under one roof.
- Metrics and reports to simplify the scattered data.
- Easy login and management experience for gym owners.
- Gamifying experience for workout freaks!
Target users 🏋🏻♀️
The target users for this app are the business owners of the fitness industry.
Process 👣
To know about the whereabouts of the fitness industry, I started with secondary research which included the following.
Secondary Research
- The internet research : Surfing from Quora to different websites and blog pages to identify the benefits of gym management apps and softwares and their core features.
Takeaway : I got to understand the need of a gym management application/software in Member Acquisition and Member Retention.
Sources:
🔗Importance of a gym management software
🔗Benefits of a gym management software
- Gaining competitive insight about the industry : The internet research was ideal to gain an insight of what the existing brands in the market are upto.
Takeaway : Recognizing features that the competitors have in their apps like Biometric Integration and E-invoicing, that striked my attention.
Sources:
From thorough surfing on the internet and finding some interesting facts, I started my Primary Research.
Primary Research
I. Interviewing the persona
- I had a fun time interviewing my gym owner and knowing about the pain points he faces in ideally managing the bookings and payment timeline for each member.
- He quoted, “I sometimes lose a track of cash payment records, UPI payments, and renewal dates. That’s a loss in terms of revenue and accountability.”
- Also, got an insight of how many old registers he has lost till date. 🤭 A situation I assumed would exist.
Key takeaways:
- It was important to create something that was systematic and easy to use.
- Members with due payments should be reminded via the app itself.
- All bookings at one place was necessary to keep a track.
II. Problems and opportunities during research
Problems
- It was a challenging to find references and figure out the structure of the business side of any app due to confidentiality of brands.
- Faced a little bit of reluctance while interviewing the persona.
Opportunities
- Where there is reluctance of switching to a better structure, it becomes important to have it then and there!
- The research gave me some classic features that I would look forward to work on at a later stage.
- It was totally an opportunity to create something that would ease the process of the fitness industry. Although some existing brands are already serving the purpose, I was motivated to making the flow smoother and easier than ever!
III. Analysis 🧐
As a part of the process, I used SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) to draw out some outstanding conclusions.
a. Strengths 💪
- Eliminating traditional methods of recording data
- Systematic approach to manage bookings
- Gamification to keep users engaged.
b. Weakness 🍂
- Lack of software knowledge among personas
- Cost of raising awareness towards a digital switch
c. Opportunities 🚀
- Rising health consciousness among masses
- Introduction of statistical graphs to picture out metrics in a clearer way
- Launch bio-metrics linked to app
- Freezing workout streaks
d. Threats 💣
- Competition from more established platforms in fitness industry
- Reluctance by persona to set up high cost software.
IV. Information Architecture
Creating basic IA Layouts helped me bring my thoughts together of how the app flow will function, figure out actionable clicks, and identify the possible use cases that can be developed within the flow.
Key Takeaways:
- A flow should have solid ends that don’t break.
- It should be smooth to avoid bugs.
- It should not compromise on considering minute details.
V. Wireframing
- I created some low-fidelity wireframes that could help ease the process of layouts and visual depiction.
- Wireframing helped me quickly put my thoughts together at one place and assisted to organise the information in a structured way.
VI. Visuals & Branding
- It’s an important part of the process to dig deeper into things, especially when it comes to Branding & Visual Identity. Talking about Fitness Pirates, it brings out emotions that connect the members to their workout — in terms of vision, energy and dedication towards their fitness. ⚡️
- Took into consideration typography, icons, colours, visual modes that a user perceives w.r.t fitness, etc. Thereby, bringing consistency across the app.
- Visual Aim : Make things look less complicated, as we want our workouts to be! 😉
a. Onboarding Flow
Aim : Easy login and management experience for gym owners.
- I designed an easy manager onboarding process that would allow him to login via Phone Number.
- Took into account suitable use cases that come along in the login process.
- Tried to showcase icons as an element of the logo.
b. Home
Aim : Easy and quick access to information.
- As the manager signs up, he would be directed to the Homepage that would showcase Business Report, Quick Links and Recent Booking Data.
- Also, added a provision where the manager can welcome the new members.
c. Bookings
Aim : Simplified process of viewing and managing bookings.
- Bookings page to sort and manage the bookings and members.
- Easy sorting and action tasks for filtering and managing bookings.
d. Members
Aim : Effortlessly viewing members list and their information.
- Alphabetical directory of members that comes along the search option.
- Allows manager to view member’s profile, checkout booking history, send them a message and remove the member from the system.
e. Reports
Aim : To eliminate traditional methods of maintaining payment records and quick analysis of data in terms of bookings and revenue.
- Created card style visuals for clear understanding of data.
- Kept visuals minimal to maintain the overall look and feel of the app.
- Introduced calendar to set timeline of data.
- Renewal message by manager in case of due payments.
- Edge Case : Weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual presets.
f. Leaderboard and workout streaks 🔥
Aim : Additional feature to stay close to the members.
- A feature I personally loved working on! This gamification feature is a way of Retention of members (AARRR Pirate Metrics framework) — that lets them stay loyal towards their workout and Fitness Pirates.
- Each fire emoji 🔥 represents 1 session of workout.
Iterations that helped reach the final outcome.
- Went through a number of iterations on certain stages to reach a point that would not only solve the problem, but also improve the app visually.
- Tried implementing graphs as a part of reports. Due to boxed timeline of 2 weeks, I was not able to solve the problem via graphical representation.
- Experimented with layouts of navigation, solids and gradients, big icons and minimal ones.
VII. Prototyping
Created a prototype to communicate, test and advocate the flows within the app.
Conclusion ⚡️
Learnings
- Realized the importance of time-boxing since it was a 2-week assignment.
- It was challenging to work on the business side of an app that had a very few references.
- Always consider working in a structured way to bring consistency and efficiency in a project.
- Iterations improve the design multifold.
- Learnt how content-copy plays an important role to target the audience in a right way.
- As a designer, my main job is to provide value for my target users and not just design screens.
What I could have done better (Edge cases)
- Use of graphs to depict the data.
- Timeline presets in case of reports.
- There is always a room for iteration on visuals. 🎬
The End 🌈
It felt amazing while I was working on this project since I have recently made gym a part of my life and it’s a happy place for me. It was quite challenging but it feels good that I picked this project to display my journey as a product designer.
I am thankful to my mentors and peers who had helped me with for all their feedback. 💛
