Mily
A mobile app empowering students to use the gym with confidence and ease.
Overview
I designed an app to help students feel welcomed and confident in gym spaces. The aim was to create a sense of community within college gym spaces while empowering people to reap the health benefits of exercising.
Problem
Novice gym users, especially women, are unable to reach their exercise goals due to intimidation, anxiety, and harassment encountered in gym spaces.
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Solution
Using a data-driven approach to support gym users to find a buddy or like-minded people to work out with, navigate gym spaces, learn how to use equipment, and report harassment.
My Role
Research
UX Design
UI Design
Prototyping
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Duration
10 weeks
Oct-Dec, 2021
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Tools
Miro
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
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Team
Lily Liu
Mina Ryu
Yixi Liu
Ilia Savin
Meghna Balachandran
Having domain expertise in the problem space allowed me to frame the research plan and lead the team during the ideation and design phases of the project.
A Glimpse of the Solution
Feature 1
Find your Gym Buddy
The user goes through a 3 step process to set up their profile in order to be matched with gym buddies:
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Step 1: Personal details
Step 2: Exercise preferences
Step 3: Availability
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Feature 2
Gym Map
The user can select the different areas and view the levels of crowd within those sub spaces. They can also see the occupancy status of each piece of equipment or station in addition to having access to exercise and setup videos for each piece of equipment.
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Feature 3
Find a Group
The user can browse the existing exercise groups, select based on aligning interests, request to join, and, wait for the group administrator to approve their request. The user also has to option to create their exercise group.
Feature 4
Flag Inappropriate Behavior
The user can easily alert the gym staff about any inappropriate behavior or uncomfortable situation without having to go through tedious formalities and disrupt their workout.
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What does success look like?
The mobile application service was designed to achieve the following goals:
Increase the quarter-on-quarter new sign-ups by 10%. Monitor frequency of new member gym use
Improve gym attendee gender ratio* from 5:1 to 3:1 over 3 quarters
*male : other genders
Process Summary
Research
Project Background
Through secondary research, we found that new gym users, especially women, are unable to reach their exercise goals due to intimidation, anxiety, and harassment encountered while using gym spaces.
We also found that sexual harassment and discomfort in gyms disproportionately affected women.
of women have experienced harassment at gyms
56%
2.68x
more likely for sexual harassment to occur to women at gyms
92%
of the cases of harassment against women go unreported
Primary Research Methods
We used surveys, fly on the wall, and interviews to understand users' pain points and guide shape the design solution.
258 Survey
Responses
Fly on the Wall UW Gym
9 Virtual
Interviews
Research Findings
Surveys
Key Findings
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Discomfort and harassment are issues at gyms - 61.6% of 258 survey participants reported feeling uncomfortable or harassed.
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People reported various forms of harassment - Being stared at (41.8%), repeated requests for the phone number (39.7%), and having photos/videos taken without consent (37.6%) were the most common.
Fly on the Wall
Key Findings
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Discomfort and harassment are issues at gyms - 61.6% of 258 survey participants reported feeling uncomfortable or harassed.
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People reported various forms of harassment - Being stared at (41.8%), repeated requests for the phone number (39.7%), and having photos/videos taken without consent (37.6%) were the most common.
Interviews
Key Findings​
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Intimidation, self-consciousness, and male domination were cited as indirect sources of discomfort.
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Women change their body language, compromise their exercise form, change their schedules, and bring friends to avoid attracting attention from men at gyms.
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Women go to the gym to feel good, change their appearance, to get stronger/fitter.
Who are the users?
Our personas were created to represent a novice at the gym as well as an experienced gym-goer. While our solution focuses on creating a sense of comfort for beginners in gym spaces, it also serves those who are at the later stages of their exercise journies.
Design
Project Goals
Help women stay safe and reduce feelings of intimidation or discomfort at the gym.
Improve wayfinding, orientation, and understanding of gym spaces and equipment.
Facilitate positive interactions within gym spaces.
The Design Question
How might we empower young women to use gym spaces with ease and confidence?
Ideation
Our team, consisting of 5 designers spent 35 minutes brainstorming 43 ideas that were then grouped into 10 major themes. These 10 themes were then evaluated against the needs of our users and synthesized into 3 design concepts.
Concept Testing
Concept 1 - Smart Equipment
Smart equipment for individual preferences. Users can access personalized tutorials by scanning bar codes and receive instant feedback on their form by means of wearable sensors.
Sketch by Meghna Balachandran
Participants' Feedback
Though users resonated with the ability to view tutorials on how to use gym equipment, users preferred to receive feedback on exercise form from a person. Self-adjusting equipment was ruled out due to feasibility concerns.
Concept 2 - Self Guided Tour
The user is guided through the gym space and the exercise routine from one piece of equipment to the next with the help of an audio-visual guide.
Sketch by Yixi Liu
Participants' Feedback
This idea was received well by most users. It was ultimately eliminated as it created conflict with our design goal to create positive human interactions within gym spaces. Also, users were primarily interested in the interactive gym map.
Concept 3 - Gym Buddy Match
Users will be matched with a gym partner based on compatibility, preferences, and availability.
Sketch by Meghna Balachandran
Participants' Feedback
The idea was received well by all users. All of them mentioned that having a partner would increase their confidence and comfort levels within gym spaces.
Project Rescoping
One size cannot fit all
Considering the various different kinds of gyms present today, our team concluded that one solution would not fit all. Since the bulk of our user research focused on subjects who were between the ages of 19-30 or college-going students, we decided to scope down our design to focus only on gym spaces within universities and use the University of Washington's Intramural Activities Building as the subject of our design solution.
Information Architecture
The information architecture diagram shows the hierarchy of the elements within the app in terms of main features and pages. The organization is such that each function stems from the homepage.
User Flows and Prototyping
The first iteration of our prototype included 3 key user flows for each feature.
Create a profile and find a gym buddy
Find an exercise space and learn to use equipment
Request for help or assistance
Usability Testing
We ran moderated usability tests on 3 participants through virtual sessions that lasted between 45-60 minutes. A participant, a moderator, and a note-taker were present during each of the usability tests.
Create a profile and find a gym buddy
Find an exercise space and learn to use equipment
Request for help
The Solution
Find your Gym Buddy
This feature was designed to facilitate positive interactions within gym spaces and reduce barriers such as intimidation and discomfort. Users can find long or short-term workout buddies based on their interests, preferences, and availability.
Navigate Gym Spaces
This feature was designed to help users with wayfinding, orientation, and comfort within gym spaces. Users can view crowd levels in different spaces, learn about the availability of equipment, and understand how to use the equipment.
Find a Group
This feature helps users find a group of like-minded people to work out and interact with and build a community through shared exercise experiences.
Flag Inappropriate Behavior
This feature helps keep the gym safe and facilitates positive interactions.
Try out the Prototype
Reflections
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During the ideation phase, the team liked all three concept ideas and wasn't able to decide which to take forward. Concept testing helped us overcome this directional block. Thus, testing when in doubt was an important takeaway for me because it facilitated a critical pivot.
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Scoping our project earlier could have helped us use our 10 weeks more efficiently.
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In addition, this would have given us the opportunity to run another round of usability tests which could have helped to create a more robust design solution.
