Fit Misfit

Step 1: Project Ideation

This fitness app was deconstructed into a carefully thought out one page business model using the Lean Canvas template which can be found below.

Step 2: User Research and User Interviews

One key step that I had not done with Hive Mind, which can be found here, is to gain practical experience in conducting user research and user interviews. The reason being that Hive Mind was a project for me to learn how to take a small idea, create a feature list, prioritize these features, build a user flow, create wireframes and turn these wireframes into an interactive prototype. However with this project, I wanted to learn other key skills used in product development such as user research, user interviews and other skills found in the next steps of this report.

Participant Criteria and Screener Survey

To recruit the right participants, I needed to define the specific criteria that I wanted to identify the right participants for my user interviews. I created this participant criteria table to see which questions I should ask to choose the right participants. After creating this table and deciding what my screening questions should be, I created a Google Form and sent this form out to social networks and community groups.

After creating the Google form, I received over 30 responses and narrowed these responses down to about 8 participants to interview. Most of the responses that I had to filter out indicated that they went to the gym quite frequently, had set gym routines or had time to go to the gym and since these people did not meet the criteria, they were not chosen to be in the user interviews. However, eight of the participants met the participant criteria and were later interviewed for around 30 minutes face to face.

User Interview Guide

For the user interviews, it was important for me to see what people were looking for in terms of their fitness goals or any issues they faced on a daily basis. It was also important for me to see if the problems they faced with fitness could be addressed through my fitness app. It was a little difficult to come up with questions that were not leading questions, but after some trial and error I came up with ten specific questions to ask my interviewees. During the interviews, as I would ask a few followup questions the conversation would slightly stray from the main questions, but these ten questions were the main focus:

1) What are your big goals and areas of focus right now in terms of fitness?

2) What are your big problems in terms of exercise?

3) Can you walk me through the last time this problem happened?

4) What specifically makes this problem so bad?

5) How are you currently dealing with problem?

6) Why haven’t you been able to find a solution to this problem?

7) What alternative solutions have you tried?

8) How might you fit a solution into your daily life?

9) Can you think of anything else that I should ask you about this issue?

10) Is there anyone else you would recommend I speak to about this problem?

Analyzing the Research

Within a few days I completed the user interviews and had gathered data on each of the eight participants. The next step was for me to analyze the information I gathered. After creating a spreadsheet with each of the participant’s answers, I then used affinity mapping (shown in the images below) to find any common relationships, themes or insights. Affinity mapping helped me figure out what kind of problems my target users collectively mentioned and what kind of solutions I should be building to address these issues accordingly.

After having laid out all the post-its, as seen in the first image, I started seeing similar themes. In all my user interviews, people were mentioning that:

1. they do not know what to do

2. they have a busy schedule/are not consistent

3. have no motivation

4. there are no consequences or motivation for exercising

5. they would like to have a friend or peer to hold them accountable

6. they think classes would keep them committed

7. all the users listed their goals in terms of fitness, such as losing weight.

These seven themes are seen and categorized in the middle image and in the last image the affinity diagram is shown laid out.

Step 3: Product Spec

The next step was the product spec which I completed in order to better understand the fitness app’s purpose, functionality and features. I tried to think through and document as many possible problems and minimize any issues that could come up. The product spec can be found below:

Step 4: Wireframes, Prototyping and Usability Testing

Wireframes and Prototyping

Next, I used Balsamiq to create the wireframes for Fit Misfit. The user interviews really helped me see which issues needed to be addressed with fitness given my target user group and the product spec helped the direction of what should be included in each section of the app. After creating the wireframes, I used Invision to turn the wireframes into a prototype, which can be found here.

The wireframes are found down below. There are four sections:

Section 1) General Feed: A general feed that displays the achievements, goals and habit tracker streaks of the user’s friends

Section 2) Workout Planner: Constructs workouts for the user based on desired criteria

Section 3) Habit Tracker: Shows various continuous habits as well as desired goals that want to be achieved for the month

Section 4) User Profile: Includes a list of past workouts and completed achievements

Usability Testing

Next, I tested the prototype and the screens I created with actual users to see if they were able to understand what was going on or provide helpful ideas for improvements. I asked the users to complete a series of tasks within my prototype and I was able to ask them further questions after the tasks were completed to see if I could improve the existing flow. I created a script of what I would ask my user’s during the test. I started with an introduction, got context around user behaviors and workflows, had the users complete three simple tasks and then asked for general feedback to improve the prototype.

The three tasks I asked them to complete were:

1) Create a workout

2) Share your completed achievements with your friends

3) Find out what your goals for this month are

Example wrap up questions:

• What did you like or dislike about this prototype?

• What are some features or functionality you wish you had here?

• Which parts of this page were very important to you?

Examples of general feedback:

• Move the option for a exercise partner to the end of the exercise selection process

• Page for congratulating users after completing their workout

  • should include option to share workout

  • should include exercise streak or other things

• Be able to visualize the progress towards the next level

• Enjoyed the aspect of the avatar in an environment

  • Would be cool to add accessories

• Would use the habit tracker as a way for motivation

Overall, usability testing for this prototype was quite helpful and I restructured some wireframes based on the user feedback.

Step 5: Product Backlog & Product Roadmap

I decided to derive my product roadmap from my product backlog and work in a bottom up manner. First, I created the product backlog with a list of user stories and prioritized these by impact and urgency. Then, I created the product roadmap by identifying certain themes within the product backlog and then grouped these themes together accordingly. By working in a bottom up manner, it was easier for me to see certain themes and which way was best to develop this mobile app.

Product Backlog

I created a product backlog as a way of creating a prioritized feature list that contains short descriptions of all the functionalities desired in this particular mobile app. I chose to prioritize the list of features by impact and urgency and I did not include the engineering costs since I am not a subject matter expert. For the impact column, I realized that the most impactful features of this fitness app would be the habit tracker as well as the personal avatar since people mentioned not having any motivation or time to exercise in the user interviews. For the urgency column, the most urgent features would be what a fitness app absolutely must have, which is the ability to create an exercise routine, so this column was ranked as such. Below you can find the product backlog for each of the features:

Product Roadmap

Using ProdPad, I made a product roadmap, which is a strategic document to communicate a broader product vision and goals to other people. In my product roadmap, there is a column for ‘current’ items, ‘near term’ items and ‘future’ items. There is also legend for each color which represents various concepts. Each item has a title, a short description and a color associated with that item; this makes for a nice visualization using color coding to easily understand which category each item belongs in and when the item will be released. Below is the product roadmap for this mobile app:

Summary

In this project, I learned a lot of the necessary steps in product development. I learned how to conduct user interviews and user research, how to properly analyze the research collected from interviews, how to create a product spec, how to conduct a usability test, how to create a product backlog and how to create a product roadmap. In my previous project, Hive Mind, I had learned how to wireframe and prototype as well, so learning these necessary skills and tools helped the process go by more quickly in this project. One key thing I had to remember is that, with this project, there were no real users since it was a new mobile app idea. There were slight differences in the process with this project in comparison to a true product development role. For example, usually with user interviews, the interview would be conducted with existing users rather than strangers who fit the target acceptance criteria. I noticed other slight differences throughout this product development project, but for the most part I was able to understand and implement the main ideas of each step of a product development role.

Overall, learning these skills was very helpful. The skill that helped the most was where I learned how to interact with people during interviews and tests and how to look into not what the user is saying directly, but rather what they really mean. Oftentimes users do not know exactly what they are looking for, but what a user says during a user interview hints at what the user may really want in terms of features. I also learned how to ask non-leading follow up questions and how to conduct an interview that was more of a conversation than a direct line of questioning. This project was very well rounded and I definitely learned a lot of valuable skills through this project. I cannot wait for the next time I am able to use these skills in my next role.