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Project

An iOS app called Gymnasium

Background

For fitness trainers, Gymnasium is the ultimate tool for scheduling sessions and managing clientele. Add your clients, schedule sessions, view your weekly dashboard, view your daily schedule and monthly calendar, create reusable programs for each client, and access client progress.

My role

End-to-end Design, User Research, Product and Brand Strategy, UX/UI, Prototyping and Testing

This is how I came up with the concept:

I completed this project as part of the Grow with Google UX course.

This project was perfect for me, because I’m a gym nut.

Really; I’m there all the time.

My first step was to get in contact with a few personal trainers who were willing to talk with me about their work.

This is how I began my research:

I prepared an interview questionnaire, then completed one-on-one interviews with 2 personal trainers, Orpheius and Courtney. I recorded their responses, then transcribed them.

These were the interview questions:

What do you do to keep track of your training schedule?

Orpheius said: “I use schedule software we have at work and Google calendar on my phone. The one at work we don’t have outside access to. If I’m not at work and someone wants to schedule I’ll use Google calendar to remind me to make the schedule next time I’m at work.”

Courtney said: “Chirotouch. It’s made for doctors, but I schedule my clients on there.”

Are you happy with it? Why or why not?

Orpheius said: “It could be better. The one at work no. We should be able to edit our schedules from outside.”

Courtney said: ”No, because I can only schedule clients. I can’t schedule other things I have to do throughout the day and I can’t manage my time appropriately. I’m only allowed to schedule people at certain times. I have rules in my schedule and that is what makes it challenging.”

What challenges or frustrations do you face with how you currently manage your schedule?

Orpheius said: “Missing appointments. Not being able to double check appointments. Sometimes it gets busy and you forget to book or you double book. Let’s say I forgot I had someone at 3:00 tomorrow and another client wants 3:00, so I just book it because I can’t check. Also, not being able to make adjustments.”

Courtney said: ”Cancellations. Managing cancellations and filling the spot quickly.”

Are there some ways you wish it were easier?

Orpheius said: “If you’re not on a specific computer you can’t make any changes. I even have my login that I used at a different Crunch and i couldn’t log in even though we’re on the same system.”

Courtney said: ”I feel like if there was an automated way that it would later charge people and automatically keep track of their sessions that would be better. Keeping track of session numbers is a bitch, I have to do it every week.”

Session numbers, I imagine, are the amount of sessions a client has purchased?

“If they bought a package of 10, every time I see them I have to write down 2 out of 10, 3 out of 10. A lot of the time I misquote how many sessions someone has. I can’t use it on my phone. I have to take pictures before I leave work. It would be nice to give my clients the option to schedule online. It’s a pain in the ass because the doctors’ schedule is separate from mine and if his schedule changes it doesn’t update mine. I have to set reminders to change my schedule next time I’m at work.”

Is there anything you’d like to see in an app like this?

Orpheius said: “Client session info! How many they’ve used or have remaining. A way to track their progress, weight loss, weight gain, weekly/monthly track for exercise. Pounds lost and lifted.”

Courtney said:

*She was talking too fast for me to write her response word-for-word.

Automatic payments, client and trainers share access to the schedule, ability to pay for sessions online, ability to book out months in advance, alert clients when they’re scheduled, texts or Google invites, keep track of session numbers. It would be cool if the client had an Apple Watch that would automatically sync with the app so the trainers can see what their client is doing.

This is how I interpreted the data:

I took notes on their behavior and tone during the interviews:

Orpheius

“Orphieus often had the tone of being sort of irritated with his system but also kind of resigned to it. It sucks but what are you gonna do 🤷‍♂️ sort of thing.

Orphieus wants to be in control of his business, and to do so he’s constantly rescheduling, building workout programs, and doing everything he can to keep his clients on track toward their goals.

He wants to be able to seamlessly manage his training schedule from wherever he is, keep up-to-date with his clients, and have access to comprehensive client profiles so that he can make more money, be more efficient with his time, and give the best service to his clients.”

Courtney

“Courtney was forthcoming and animated about her dissatisfaction with her current scheduling system. Sometimes she spoke too fast for me to keep track of everything she was saying.

Courtney leads a busy lifestyle. She balances a 9-to-5, a side hustle, and, soon, studying to be a massage therapist. It’s important that her time is used as efficiently as possible so she can achieve all of her goals.

She needs a tool that can put all of her clients needs in one place, whether they’re from the clinic or her own.

Some her favorite features would include payment, booking and alerts, booking in advance, and session tracking. Something that could integrate all of her clients into a single schedule would be really helpful.”

Already I had so much helpful insight as to what problems fitness trainers face each week.

I created empathy maps to visualize my observations.

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Then I identified 4 key pain points:

Double-booking
Losing track of sessions
Losing track of client progress
Filling cancelled slots

These pain points translated into the most important features that the app would offer.

This is how I researched the competition:

I felt I was off to a great start when it came to understanding my users, but it was time to research the existing solutions to these problems.

I identified and audited my top 5 competitors.

This was an exhaustive process.

I downloaded each app, created the necessary accounts, and completed their user flows.

I compiled information and screenshots for each of them, then analyzed and graded them across 4 categories:

First Impression
Interaction
Visual Design
Content.

I used this opportunity explore the UX and UI decisions that other designers have made.

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I noticed that each product was either one of two things:

It looked and felt pretty good, but it was packed with features that just pushed the most essential experiences out of the spotlight.
It looked awful, but the UX was much more to-the-point.

This observation made it easier to refine the scope of this project and to understand what I could do to set this product apart.

This is how I came up with ideas:

I started sketching ideas for the home screen. Initially, I drew inspiration from the calendar apps from Apple and Google.

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I continued designing the Home Screen to be a daily view of the user’s training schedule.

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What I like about this design is that it's easy to understand how to add a session to a time slot. However, navigating to different days of the week can be tedious, especially if the user needs to schedule several sessions. And having to navigate back and forth between the Home Screen and the Calendar isn't ideal either.

Later in this case study, you'll see how I chose to reimagine the Home Screen design.

This is how I conducted a remote usability study:

I created an interactive prototype in order to administer an unmoderated remote usability study using maze.co.

I recruited 5 participants for the study. Each test took between 5 and 10 minutes to complete.

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The data I received from the usability study was humbling. I believe that the results would have been much better if I had designed the prototype with higher fidelity.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) like completion rates, time-on-task, and misclicks were suboptimal.

One aspect I appreciated about using Maze was the ability to include questions between tasks to obtain qualitative information that could supplement the quantitative data. This gave me a more comprehensive understanding of how users were interpreting, or failing to interpret, what was on the screen.

I identified themes and insights using the data.

Here’s an example of one of those insights:

Based on this theme: 5/5 users used the back button to complete 1 or more flows, an insight is: Touch targets should include the field labels so that users don’t miss the desired interaction. The + button on the ‘program’ screen should have a larger touch target. Every interaction should provide feedback, even if it isn’t on-task.

This is how I grew as a designer using the feedback:

One of the most valuable insights I gained from feedback was that the wireframe designs were difficult to comprehend. This does not necessarily mean the designs were entirely ineffective, but users had trouble understanding them without the strong visual cues that were missing from the wireframes.

I recall struggling with making confident UI decisions. I felt like I was going around in circles trying to communicate key visual principles like balance, harmony, and dominance.

My typesetting skills were perhaps the most deficient aspect of my designs. Poor typesetting resulted in designs that did not effectively direct user interaction or clearly communicate value.

I also realized that I had much to learn about accessibility when setting type, selecting colors, and designing usable buttons with accessible touch targets.

The journey to completing this app to the best of my ability involved much more skill-building.

I will now reluctantly share some of these designs (🤦‍♂️) and how I improved them.

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Before (Home Screen)

After

I chose to reimagine the home screen because I designed this tool to help fitness trainers take control of their schedule. While designing for the one-day-at-a-time philosophy has its benefits, it isn't helpful when planning an entire week or month of work.

During my research, I learned that the schedule of a personal fitness trainer is rarely routine. They are constantly accommodating the availability of their current clients, trying to acquire new ones and dealing with cancellations.

With this in mind, I redesigned the Home Screen as a weekly dashboard.

Here are the features I included:

The Up Next feature always displays the user’s next scheduled session. Icons indicate the types of training scheduled for that session (weights, cardio, and calisthenics).
Total Weekly Sessions displays the remaining sessions for the week. This helps the trainer quickly make predictions about their income and availability.
Each day of the week has its own card, clearly indicating when the user’s workday starts and ends, and how many available slots there are on any given day.
The Quick Sessions feature allows the user to recreate the last session for their most frequent clients with one tap.

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Before