Spartans Boxing Club Mobile App
New interactive features for Spartans Boxing Club members
Spartans Boxing Club (SBC) is a martial arts and wellness provider that focuses on building a community. SBC wanted new features that would boost the customer retention rate and also the community reach and engagement
The Challenge
Currently, members are only able to book their classes through the mobile app. SBC wanted the mobile app to be more interactive and engaging. The focus is on building a community and also motivating members and non-members to work out with SBC.
Members need app features that allow them to manage their fitness at SBC while strengthening their community ties so that they can consistently continue on their fitness journey as efficiently and comfortably as possible.
The Solution
The new features will have to make the app less transactional by allowing members to meet all their fitness and social needs so that they can have a unique and motivational experience in their exercise journey. This would help boost the retention rate of current members and also to increase the conversion rate of visitors (trial users) into members.
My Role
For this 3 week project, I worked alongside 3 other team members where I was the lead of usability testing. I was also involved with user research, competitive analysis, wireframing, and prototyping.
Design Process
Discover & Analyse
-
User Interviews
-
Affinity Mapping
-
Persona
-
Competitive Analysis
-
Feature Anlysis
Design
-
Design Studio
-
Wireframing
-
Prototyping
Test
-
Usability Test
-
System Usability Scale
User Research
We interviewed 8 current members and 10 non-members which helped us to understand their thought process and motivations to join a fitness community, and their experience while attending group classes. From the user interviews, we synthesized the responses through affinity mapping using the platform Miro and we uncovered 4 main insights.
Users need accountability when working out
Users want to feel a sense of belonging
Users go to class to socialise
Users had shared motivations behind exercising
Personas
From the insights obtained through our user research and client's goals, we created 3 user personas to help us to understand and align on the user's needs
Fit Fernando
Fernando is someone who doesn’t really concern himself with other people at the gym, he just wants to take care of his body and keep it in optimal condition. He takes pride in the work that he does and likes to keep track of his progress while still challenging himself.
Unmotivated Anita
I think we’ve all been unmotivated Anita at some point in our lives. She’s gained a little bit of weight over the pandemic year and has been trying her best to lose that weight. She was never quite into fitness before, so she needs some support from her community to keep her going on her journey to her ideal body.
Rockin Reuben
Reuben is the social butterfly of the bunch, going to the studio way before class starts to hang out with his friends and staying late after to keep talking. He loves making new friends, and posts on social media about his experiences
Competitive Analysis
The team conducted competitive and comparative analysis on mobile apps of competitors given by our client and those used by our interviewees. We identified that the competitors used an in-app chat and social media feeds to increase engagement and interaction between members of the community. Goal setting and the display of achievements were also some of the features they used to motivate their members to workout and go to classes.
Ideation
After understanding what the client and users were looking for, the initial ideation stage began. A set of key considerations were created to help guide the initial design, ensuring that the project goals set at the start of the project were met efficiently.
Business Needs
-
Increase retention rate
-
Increase community reach and engagement
User Centred Design
-
Prioritise features that bring delight to the user
-
Design features with empathy for the user, leveraging on familiarity and community
-
Design features that improve the overall experience for the user
Ease of use
-
Design features that allow easy usage in context of scenarios (on-the-go users, one handed usage, etc)
-
Design features that minimise excessive administrative work for current staff
Scalability
Design Studio
A Design Studio was carried out with the team and a stakeholder from SBC. During this exercise, ideas were generated, critiqued, and prioritized, building a shared vision and consensus on possible design directions and valuable features.
Finalized features:
-
Achievements
-
Leaderboards
-
Social Feed
-
In-App Chat
After ensuring that the design direction was aligned with SBC’s goals, the final sketches were produced.
Final Sketches
Usability Testing
From the sketches, a low fidelity prototype was created and was later converted to a Hi-Fi prototype after conducting a usability test. A total of 2 usability tests were conducted for 3 design iterations, where each participant was asked to fill out a survey after the test which would give us a system usability score. For the first test, the app scored a 78 and on the second test an 81.25. Through the usability test, we were able to compare the results between the iterations and focus on the area where we needed to improve on.
From the article "Does Better Usability Increase Customer Loyalty?"
Based on usability research by Jeff Sauro, an app with a usability score above 80, would be more likely to be talked about and recommended by users to their friends. This is great because it ties into our overarching project goals, which are to increase community engagement, getting more leads which would eventually lead to more sign-ups.
Usability Issue #1:
8 out of 10 users had issues with editing their profile picture
Analysis:
Users felt that it was normal to click on the profile pic to edit instead of clicking the edit button
Solution:
Allow users to go to the edit by clicking on the profile picture
Usability Issue #2:
6 out of 10 users had issues with the leaderboard
Analysis:
There was no display of the users ranking if they were not in the top 4
Solution:
Provide a segment in the leaderboards to show user’s current ranking
Final Prototype
Achievements
We have devised an Achievements feature to help motivate members to accomplish their fitness goals. When the user earns a badge, they obtain points that would help them climb the leaderboard
Leaderboard
We created a Leaderboard system to encourage members to attend classes and achieve their fitness goals. Users will gain points by attending classes, participating in events and matches, or adding friends in the app.
Social Feed
Social media feed was added to meet users social needs. This allows users to keep up and interact with other members in the gym which will help them strengthen their community ties and gain new friends.
In-App Chat
In-app chat function allows users to easily and efficiently communicate with other members and also with the gym staff.
Key Takeaways
Next Steps
Although our time with this project is done, we believe that design is never finished and continuous iteration and improvement are vital for the success of the app. The team would like to conduct more usability testings to review the proposed features for further validation.
Reflections
It is important to make sure that the features being added are in line with the clients’ goals and needs as it is easy to get carried away in trying to add new features to an app. We need to design features that are easy to use for both users and businesses and make sure it is scalable. We should not only be thinking of how the end-user will enjoy the features but we should also consider the administrative work for the business.
Like what you see? Lets talk!