Increased Engagement On Fitness App With New Messaging Features
Mobile UI/UX Design | UX Research | Business Constraints
I designed a mobile app and messaging features that created an in-person workout experience to increase engagement.
Momentum is a mobile, fitness-tracking app that allows users to set individual fitness goals, perform and track workouts, and interact with friends in the following ways:
Video chat workouts
Suggested workouts
Workout results
Scope
This was a student project where I needed to improve the features of a hypothetical product.
Brief
A well-established fitness app was having trouble keeping users on the app. The product manager requested that a new messaging feature be designed to increase engagement.
My Role
I was the sole designer responsible for research, design, prototyping, and testing.
UI/UX Designer
UX Researcher
Timeline
1-month independent end-to-end student project.
Tools
Figma, Miro, Zoom, Google Suite
Social features on fitness apps are impersonal, and nothing beats an in-person fitness class.
HOW CAN I CREATE A NEW MESSAGING FEATURE TO CREATE SUSTAINED ENGAGEMENT?
Problem
Context
Momentum was having trouble keeping users on the app, so a messaging feature was requested to increase engagement. Through research, I found that existing social features on fitness apps felt impersonal, and users preferred in-person fitness interactions.
On average, user engagement is heavy for the first 3 weeks, and then it drops off leading to the deletion of the app.
User Pain Points
Impersonal alerts of friends’ workout achievements
Not as encouraging as in-person workout experiences
Challenge
How can I design a new messaging feature to create sustained engagement?
User Persona
18 - 34 years old
Very tech-savvy — on their phones for several hours a day
Very budget-conscious
Messaging and communicating with friends and family is a crucial part of their daily lives
Solution
I wanted to create messaging that took elements of real-life interactions and give users more control over the messages sent.
Final Design Elements
Let users control when results are shared.
Allows for multiple methods of sending.
Has customized messages.
Video call workouts.
The Most Impactful Feature
Video call workouts — where users do a workout with a friend by starting a video call and playing a video workout simultaneously. Users encouraged each other in real-time, felt more connected, and had a “similar to in-person” workout.
My final designs focused on these three features.
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Sharing features that mimic popular social media apps.
Users use social media, texts, and calls in their daily lives, so I brought those concepts to the sharing feature of this app.
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Chat instead of friend feeds to create more connection.
Fitness app users often use social encouragement to reach goals, but I wanted the experience to be personalized and foster connection.
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Video chat workouts with a friend.
According to users, nothing beats in-person encouragement or friendly competition when working towards fitness goals. Video chat workouts bring those real-life elements while incorporating a popular tool for social interaction, FaceTime.
Process
Research — Ideate — Design — Prototype — Test — Iterate
I researched the assumption that messaging features would increase engagement.
My Assumption
Honestly, after looking over the brief, I was skeptical. I assumed that people don't use fitness apps to message each other and share results. They use them to track fitness, find workouts, and set goals.
So why does the product manager think adding messaging will increase engagement?
Competitive Research
I started by looking at major companies in the fitness app space: Nike Run Club, Strava, and Fitlist. Each had tailored its messaging-like features to mimic social media. Users could join groups, see leaderboards, get notifications, and post workouts or results on a feed.
Does that even work?
Survey
To really understand the users, I chose to conduct a survey to learn a lot about the users in a short amount of time.
With 66 participants, I found out that:
Most users don't use fitness apps even if they work out frequently.
48.5% of respondents say "social aspects" help them achieve goals, yet only 21% of respondents use fitness apps for social-related purposes.
Apple health products were the most popular app, by far.
User Interviews
I needed to get more insight on these survey results, so I chose 5 participants from those survey respondents to interview.
Interview Goals
I wanted to find out the following:
How do and why do users use fitness apps?
How do users stay in touch with friends and family?
What motivates users to set and meet fitness goals?
After analyzing the data, I found two big trends.
User Trends:
In-person workouts with friends are preferred over fitness notifications or workout post feeds.
Fitness app notifications feel impersonal, lack connection, and are “somewhat discouraging” unless the user did the workout with their friend.
Then, it was time to ideate.
How Might We
How might we make this app feel more like an in-person workout experience?
Brainstorming
I looked through interview data to see what made an in-person fitness interaction so beloved. Here’s what I found:
"The energy in the room".
Someone physically being there encouraging them.
Getting to see people that don't normally fit into their schedules.
Doing the same workout as someone else.
Solution Idea
Video chat workouts with the ability to share workouts in a text-like message.
I decided to design two main user flows.
Sharing workout ideas with a friend.
Joining and doing a virtual workout with a friend.
Sketching and Wireframing
Once I created my designs and made it into a clickable prototype, I needed to test more functions of the app to ensure it was usable and logical to a real-users. I focused on these 3 tasks:
Sharing a workout with a friend before doing the workout
Doing the workout, then sharing the results with a friend
Joining and doing a video call workout with a friend
After I decided on the flow of the sketches, I transformed those screens into high fidelity mock ups to start testing.
After refining the style, I conducted usability tests to validate my ideas.
Test Objectives
Usability
Do participants understand how to operate the sharing and scheduling features?
Perception
What do participants think of the video chat workout and sharing feature?
Engagement
Would participants use these features repeatedly?
Test Results
Overall, the app and its new social features were a big success.
Users liked sharing workouts.
Users enjoyed the flexibility of sending it before or after a workout.
Tests validated the video call workouts concept! — Users loved the option to stay motivated and feel connected even if they didn’t like working out with friends previously.
UI and flows were logical and intuitive.
Using test feedback, I started iterating on my designs.
Though the overall ideas were successful, I had a few more iterations to make. The following adjustments were made before testing for a second time.
Before
What Changed?
Added a landscape workout video option.
Added the option to cast the video to larger devices.
After
How Did It Help?
Less concern from participants.
Before
What Changed?
Added a notification to chat indicating a new message.
After
How Did It Help?
It didn’t! — Participants were confused and couldn’t find the new message.
I adjusted it a third time after round 2 of testing (shown above).
Before
What Changed?
Adjusted the sharing feature to mimic other popular apps.
Added ability to add different friends.
Added send via text or email option.
Added copy link option.
After
How Did It Help?
Created more guided navigation, which eliminated confusion about sending a message in-app.
Users appreciated the prefilled message with the customization option.
Before
What Changed?
Changed label from "schedule" to "invite friends".
Eliminated the option to schedule a workout alone, and retailored it for scheduling video call workouts.
After
How Did It Help?
Participants more successfully planned and sent a virtual workout invite to their friends.
Looking back, I had a few big takeaways.
Learnings
Taking inspiration from other apps to build common user flows is helpful when you want to create something that feels natural for a user.
Remember the platform you're designing for (mobile screens are small).
Users have very specialized fitness app preferences.
Final Thoughts
Many participants appreciated the messaging features I designed, but tracking and workout quality still remained a big factor when deciding whether or not a user continued using a fitness app. Given that this was a fictitious company, real-life data was not used to assess where users' engagement dropped off in the user journey.
Adding this messaging feature and performing an A/B test to assess engagement would be my next step.