Objective
Determine which new features FitSmartz should build for its premium app and present those features to an
engineering team. In determining these features, conduct the appropriate market and user research to justify final
recommendations.
Goals
Discover jobs, pains and gains of real potential users to test hypotheses and learn what challenges the market
currently faces with losing weight, improving fitness and living a healthier life. Create feature solutions to these
challenges that are justified by real data and research.
Solution
A premium feature-set that solves the major issues inhibiting weight loss, fitness improvement, and healthy living
by helping users create a personalized, turn-key fitness and nutrition plan This includes an enhanced version of the
meal log, calorie counter and exercise tracker offered in the free version of FitSmartz.
Project Outline
• Create fitness enthusiast & physical trainer interview question sets
• Interview physical trainers & fitness enthusiasts
• Analyze data from Interviews & conduct online market research
• Create user stories and acceptance criteria
• Determine feature-set via wire framing and UX/UI design with respect to acquired data and research findings
• Prioritize user story backlog
• Develop UI for core features
Profile Setup
According to my research, today’s fitness enthusiasts struggle with four core principles when looking to lose
weight, improve their fitness or live healthier:
• Discipline & motivation
• Tracking results & improvement
• Basic fitness knowledge & preparation
• Basic Nutrition knowledge
Because of this, I have decided that FitSmartz’s premium features needed to focus on motivating, educating and
providing necessary tools to empower users to effectively and efficiently improve their unique fitness conditions.
Because organizing this information can be as difficult as collecting it, I have designed tools and structures to
require minimal intervention by the user.
Everyone has different needs when it comes to fitness. There is no one-size-fits-all fitness plan. Because of this,
FitSmartz’s premium features will guide users in creating fitness and nutrition plans that are tailored to their own
unique body and needs with minimal intervention.
On-boarding Phases
• Personalization
• Fitness & Nutrition Plan Prompts
Personalization
Upon interviewing physical trainers and typical fitness enthusiasts, I determined a set of necessary pieces of
information to collect in order to personalize the user experience. This information includes gender, goal, age,
height, current weight, target weight, current body fat %, target body fat%, general fitness level, food allergies/
dislikes and exercise location preference (home/gym). This data can be found in the Profile Page for the user to
view and edit after they complete this phase of on-boarding.
• Gender data helps the app better determine appropriate nutrition goals, exercise suggestions, and recommended
improvement paces which vary for particular goals such as weight loss and muscle growth.
• Selecting a goal allows the app to educate the user regarding appropriate exercises and nutrition goals.
• Age affects appropriate nutrition goals, exercises recommendations, and recommended improvement paces
which vary greatly.
• Fitness level allows the app to favor and avoid certain exercises and weights to avoid injury and maximize fitness
effectiveness.
• Current/target weight and current/target target body fat % allow the app to establish a baseline and a
destination to guide users to.
• Gathering medical condition information allows the app to favor and avoid certain exercises and weights to
avoid injury and maximize fitness effectiveness.
• Collecting food allergy and dislikes allows the app to favor and avoid certain foods when presenting
suggestions.
• Home or gym preference helps the app filter exercises according to their applicability to your fitness plan.
Fitness & Nutrition Plan Prompts
Once a user finishes the personalization flow, phase 1 of on-boarding is complete. From here, FitSmartz will then
prompt the user to set up their fitness and nutrition plans. Upon doing so, the user is finished with on-boarding
and general app set up. This is done because users need to be consistently instructed on what to do next if not
already self-evident. Otherwise, users may become lost and not figure out how to create their fitness and nutrition
plans as easily.
Daily Habits
Earlier we mentioned discipline and motivation being a core challenge for fitness enthusiasts working to lose
weight, improve fitness and live a healthier lifestyle. The Daily Habits page plays a large role in that solution. The
role for this page is to create positive daily habits by presenting daily objectives that the user must achieve in order
to stay on track with their fitness plan. These objectives of exercise, nutrition and hydration along with consistency
are the core components that contribute to fitness results.
Weekly Recap & Daily Streak
The first feature we see is the user’s Weekly Recap of their Daily Streak. It displays the user’s daily performance
as to whether or not they are sticking to their fitness and nutrition plans. Every day, the user will update their daily
objectives. If a single task for that day is not completed, that day counts as a loss. With all action items completed,
the day is counted as a win. All wins and losses are stored within the Daily Streak. When there are 6 or more
wins in a Weekly Recap, the text may change to something like “Keep up the great work!”.
Becoming self-aware of your process is necessary in order to improve it. The key ideology here is that results are a
byproduct of your process. They correlate directly. Therefore, a productive process is what one needs to focus on
when achieving results.
People are more disciplined when implementing a structured and habitual routine. People are also typically more
accountable to a third-party as compared to themselves. The Weekly Recap and Daily Streak features are here
to provide that structure and accountability.
The calendar button in the top-right allows the user to change the date in order edit past habits. This is for when
a user forgets or makes a mistake updating their performance. Navigating through the See More button will bring
the user to the Daily Streak page.
Workout Confirmation
This feature works hand-in-hand with the Weekly Recap and Daily Streak. It is one of the three objectives that
users are keeping track of for the Daily Habits page. If a user completed their workout routine visible in the
Fitness Plan then their workout is accomplished according to the Weekly Recap and Daily Streak.
Meal Log
This is a sister-feature to the Workout Confirmation. Meal and nutrition tracking is of critical importance for users
to be able to manage their fitness. Most fitness enthusiasts are severely uninformed regarding the nutrition they
need and the nutrition they are currently getting. This feature will provide awareness into the foods users are used
to eating and will inform them if any necessary change needs to take place.
It works hand-in-hand with the Weekly Recap and Daily Streak as well. It is the second of the three objectives
that users are keeping track of for the Daily Habits page. As the day goes by, users must enter what they eat so
that they meet the daily nutritional requirements of that day viewable in the Nutrition Plan page. Upon
completion, the nutrition portion of the Weekly Recap and Daily Streak is marked as accomplished.
Hydration Log
This is the third objective necessary to successfully complete a daily habit. Most users know hydration is
important, but see it as less so than exercise and nutrition. An information button is there to educate users on
water’s role depending on which goal they have selected. As users drink water throughout the day, they can tap
on a cup icon which then fills with water. Upon drinking 8 8oz cups of water, the hydration portion of the Weekly
Recap and is accomplished.
Profile Page & Personalization
Since motivation is such a critical issue, and fitness can be a long journey, users want to know where they stand
compared to where they started and how far off their destination lies. The features within the Profile Page allow
users to track their weight progress, view/edit their personalization data, measure their bodies, and interact with
friends.
Weight Tracker
The Weight Updater is necessary to update and track your weight. It also displays a progress meter for you to
see how close you are to your goal. Coupled with the Weight Tracker chart, users can better understand the rate
at which they are getting results. These features help immensely with motivation as users without this knowledge
feel as though they are staring into the abyss with no end in sight.
Personalization
Personalization is the data that premium members gave to FitSmartz when they went through the on-boarding
process. This is offered as a feature so users can make fundamental changes to their user experience such as
changing goals. This data includes:
• Gender data helps the app better determine appropriate nutrition goals, exercise suggestions, and recommended
improvement paces which vary for particular goals such as weight loss and muscle growth.
• Selecting a goal allows the app to educate the user regarding appropriate exercises and nutrition goals.
• Age affects appropriate nutrition goals, exercises recommendations, and recommended improvement paces
which vary greatly.
• Fitness level allows the app to favor and avoid certain exercises and weights to avoid injury and maximize fitness
effectiveness.
• Current/target weight and current/target target body fat % allow the app to establish a baseline and a
destination to guide users to.
• Gathering medical condition information allows the app to favor and avoid certain exercises and weights to
avoid injury and maximize fitness effectiveness.
• Collecting food allergy and dislikes allows the app to favor and avoid certain foods when presenting
suggestions.
• Home or gym preference helps the app filter exercises according to their applicability to your fitness plan.
My Body
Fitness enthusiasts constantly view and measure their physical characteristics to assess changes and improvements. Because
of this, I included a body measurement feature where users can record their weight, waist, body fat %, chest, arm, leg, BMI
and any other body parts they may want to measure.
Visual Progress
Because people are always looking at how they look in the mirror, I thought it might be valuable to include a more
visual method of measurement. This feature is a result of fitness enthusiasts’ habits of looking in the mirror to assess fitness
progress. With this feature, users can take a photo of their body to compare it with previous photos. The user will be able to
scrub through the photos like a video to see the change right before their eyes. The feature includes an
instruction component to help users maintain similar poses and scale for an accurate representation of progress. Users
are also prompted to take a photo every 1 to 3 months. This is also done to promote infrequent physical
assessment as improving fitness takes time. Frequent assessment can often demoralize fitness enthusiasts when they
search for results that have not been given the appropriate amount of time to yet manifest.
Friends
Many fitness enthusiasts enjoy exercising in groups or with a friend. This helps them with their motivation as well
as gives people more options for exercises. These may include medicine ball tosses or exercises that require a
spotter. In any case, being able to tell which of your friends are interest in fitness and which have similar goals is
very useful for users.
Fitness Plan
Traditional fitness plans require a lot of research to discover what exercises to use, and how to be practicing them.
The education required for fitness enthusiasts to effectively, efficiently and safely improve their fitness takes too
much time and causes people to be ill-equipped in the gym. The Fitness Plan covers everything users need to
know without having to search for information.
My Schedule
Without fitness apps, many fitness enthusiasts head to the gym without a plan in place. This results in inefficient
and ineffective uses of their time. This feature takes the exercises that you’ve selected in My Exercises and loads
them into your scheduled exercise routine so you have a structured plan in place every time. My Schedule also
cycles exercises in and out from My Exercises every 3-5 weeks to avoid acclimation and plateaus.
Users can edit which days are for the gym and which are for resting to fit your busy life. Users can also customize
which exercises are done on a given day or let the app automatically generate them for you. Here you will also see
when you have or have not completed a day’s exercises from the Daily Habits page. According to physical
trainers, it has been helpful to use automated text software to send clients reminders help motivate them to take
action. Users can also set up notifications to remind them of their gym “appointment” to help provide motivation
and accountability.
My Exercises
48% of male and 34% of female fitness app users use apps just for the exercise tracking features. My Exercises
is a rolodex of your selected exercises which are loaded into My Schedule automatically with options to
customize. Fitness enthusiasts want to create a fitness plan without actually having to do the work involved in
creating a fitness plan. Therefore FitSmartz’s exercise database filled with the most effective and proven methods.
Users will see detailed information when selecting exercises to add to their routine. These exercises are
categorized and filtered to your goals from recommended weights, sets, reps, necessary equipment, home/gym
accessibility, fitness experience, injury risk level and targeted muscle/body area so your exercise search quickly
generates relevant content to your goals.
Each exercise also has a short video tutorial showcasing what to do and what NOT to do to ensure good form.
Users can also see past weight data, and take notes so they can better understand their progress and organize
their thoughts with a particular exercise. Injury is the worst possible scenario for a user. They must be educated on
proper technique to avoid such consequences.
Nutrition Plan
Fitness enthusiasts are overwhelmed with several online sources each saying something different about necessary
nutrition. They also need to track what they’re getting from the food they’re eating. The Nutrition Plan works
hand-in-hand with the Meal Log and contains the Nutrition Status and Nutrition Pace features. These allow
users to set their caloric pace while also displaying daily nutrition values currently ingested from their meals.
Nutrition Status
This feature keeps users updated on their daily nutritional progress and lets them know if they still need to sneak a
healthy snack or two in during the day. Without this information, users would have no way to assess their daily
progress and would likely ingest the incorrect nutrients over a sustained period of time.
Nutrition Pace
With Nutrition Pace, users can determine how much they want to eat in a day and learn how that impacts their
fitness goals. This feature consists of a progress predictor, and a slider that adjusts weight gained per week by
increasing or decreasing daily caloric intake.