FITMO
The Personal Fitness Motivator
Concept: FITMO is a mobile application created to help motivate people to achieve their fitness goals through a fun gamification experience. It’s designed to teach users how to properly set and structure goals all while being able to take care of a cute buddy.
Watch the Video Presentation of How I Created the FITMO
Overview
Problem: A current problem for people both new to fitness or actively on a fitness journey, is lack of motivation. This lack of motivation presents itself in both the initial phase of starting a journey and daily motivation to get up and get going.
Results: Based on research conducted I created a fitness goal setting application called FITMO that would incorporate taking care of a cute FITMO buddy by completing goals to earn points.
Approach: Directed Story-Telling Interviews | Secondary Peer-Reviewed Research | Competitive Analysis | IA Diagram I Low Fidelity Sketch I Figma Wireframing and Prototype I Usability Testing I High Fidelity Prototype
My Roles: Concept Creator, Researcher, Interview Moderator, Designer
The Challenge.
Design an application that helps not only motivate users to begin a fitness journey, but also helps them along the way.
Discovery Research
Directed Storytelling Interviews
To gain a deeper understanding of the problem, I conducted Directed Storytelling Interviews with 5 participants. I wanted to see what drove their fitness motivation and what things keep them from successfully changing health-related habits.
The main insight I found was that participants of all experience levels are primarily motivated by having a clear goal with a structured plan.
Competitive Analysis
After learning what type of technology participants for the previous interviews used, I wanted to take a deeper look into their features.
I looked at fitness trackers on the market, virtual pet games, and apps that gamified health and fitness.
What I found was that the most popular gamification apps were successful, however, they were very complex and heavily targeted at skilled “gamers”.
Peer Reviewed Research
I conducted secondary research to dig deeper into the science behind fitness motivation and proper goal setting. I also looked at the research on gamification in health and fitness.
The main insights that I took away from this research were:
People who are new to fitness tend to view it as negative due to lack of positive memories such as the “post-workout feeling”. They typically only remember feeling sore or it being difficult.
Therefore, creating positive experiences for these users right away would be beneficial to drive motivation.
In order for human beings to be successful in achieving a goal or changing a habit, they require 3 things. Feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
Gamification research shows it is successful in the fitness industry, however many games require a high skill level and can deter many users who lack those skills including those with medical predispositions or due to age-related factors.
Concept Creation
Goal of the Application
From the key insights of the directed storytelling interviews, competitive analysis, and secondary research, I identified that a potential solution for helping motivate users was to make a fitness goal setting app that not only taught users how to properly set and structure goals but created a fun and positive experience in the form of a game that did not require a high level of gaming skill.
Initial Concept and Sketches
After brainstorming what to call the character I decided on Fitmo, which combines the words fitness and motivation.
How It Works
The gamification aspect of the application would work by the user receiving points for achieving goals. With these points, the user would be able to buy items for their Fitmo in order to improve its happiness.
Their Fitmo would be able to connect to other Fitmo’s and play games which would help give users more social support on their fitness journey.
Fitmo’s happiness level would directly influence their performance in these games.
Information Architecture Diagram
After I created the original sketches, I created an information Architecture Diagram of the key features I wanted to build out and test using a low fidelity prototype.
The diagram helped me clearly visualize what screens needed to be created.
Designing The Game Loop
FITMO Game Explained
Once I had the base concept of how the application would work I needed to map out the game loop and how the user would achieve points.
The Fitmo would run on a happiness meter which directly impacts its level of interaction in its room, its visible demeanor, and its performance in the connected games. Fitmo would start at mid-happiness and would lose happiness if the user does not complete a task.
Users would earn points by completing goals. Streaks and milestones associated with daily achievements would also be rewarded with smaller point values to keep up positive encouragement and engagement.
Points would be weighted by the intensity of the exercise relative to the user’s health metrics that they would input into the app (height, weight, age, etc.)
Points would be used to buy the Fitmo items which would increase its happiness. The items would also help visually show the user and their community that they are achieving goals.
Prototypes
Low Fidelity Wireframes and Prototype
I created a low fidelity prototype using Figma. I wanted to put something in front of users to test the main concepts and functions of the application before I continued to design and build out more features.
I focused on the goal-setting features and the animation of Fitmo, especially in the game loop.
Low Fidelity Prototype Run-Through Video
Usability Testing
After creating the low fidelity prototype I conducted usability testing to look into 4 key functions. I tested the goal-setting feature, setting and marking off daily tasks, buying Fitmo items, and the game loop.
Positive Findings
Even in the low fidelity version users felt a connection with the Fitmo. They felt empathetic when it was sad and felt motivated to make it happier. One user said, “I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll run a mile if I have to”.
Users liked the simplicity and structure of the goal-setting page and felt it showed them how to properly break down a fitness goal.
Overall users felt the game was fun and positive. Users with low fitness experience felt that the application “took away the intimidation of trying to get in shape or using fitness technology”
Improvement Insights:
Users felt that the goal tracking page and graph was confusing and hard to understand
2 out of 3 users wanted the app to help them progress a workout if it become too easy mid-way through.
In the goal-setting form, users liked that they could create their own goal, but also wanted a dropdown with some options just in case they did not know where to start.
Users understood the sync symbol but 1 out of 3 mentioned that they would want feedback showing what it did or a clear title because it looks like it could also refresh the page.
Designing The FITMO
I wanted to design a character that elicited positive emotions and made users want to take care of it.
I used the “Baby Schema” which is a set of features that babies have that makes them cute. These features are:
Big eyes
Large head relative to body size
Small Nose
High Forehead
We are biologically wired to respond positively to these features, based on our need to care for our young. It has been proven by research to be one of the strongest forces that shape human behavior. It has been shown to:
Improve focus
Make people smile and feel happy
Enhance motivation
Trigger empathy and compassion
Therefore I used this cuteness factor to design the Fitmos in order to help motivate users.
Higher Fidelity Prototype
The final step was creating a higher fidelity interactive prototype using Figma, that would be presented before moving forward with building the app. I wanted to make sure the FITMO character was built to better demonstrate what the game would look like. There is still room for improvement and growth before the design reaches its final state.
High Fidelity Prototype Run-Through Video
Next Steps
Expand the design with low fidelity wireframes and prototype The immediate next step would be to implement changes based on user feedback and build out the community page, advanced feature settings, and the feedback and progression feature.
Conduct Usability Testing to look at these features As new pages and features are being built out, more usability needs to be conducted to ensure these features are working as intended and that they meet the users’ needs.
Continue to improve the high fidelity design based on research conducted The design should continue to be improved upon as data from usability testing is collected and synthesized.
Conclusion
The first initial phase of the FITMO application achieved the overall goals set out for its design. However, more work needs to be done to build out the rest of the features and pages the application would need to do. More rounds of building low fidelity prototypes and conducting usability testing need to take place before this application is completed. While I am happy about the current state of the application and the positive feedback given by users about FITMO, there is still a lot of room to continue growing and improving the final design.
