Designing a remote personal training experience for gym members
A mobile app for gym members and personal coaches to stay in touch and keep a training plan going — in and outside the gym
- Role
- Lead of the product discovery team
- Duration
- Q1 2020 – Q4 2021
- Platform
- iOS & Android member app
- Phases
- Coaching MVP → integration into the main app
Design iteration of the mobile personal coaching app.
My role
I led the product discovery team, facilitating the sessions where decisions got made
I facilitated virtual collaboration sessions to guide decisions with the product owner, business analyst and solution architect. Together with one other designer (Timothey Gubler, later Margo de Graaf) I:
Conducted benchmark & user research through qualitative interviews and field studies, to shape the new value proposition and user experience
Mapped the information architecture, wireframed and designed the use flows
Set up the design system and handed over assets & prototypes to the internal development team and solution architect
Challenge
How to motivate people to build up a training routine remotely?
People increasingly want or need to train at home and access fitness content remotely at their own time. For beginners it remains challenging to build up a healthy routine, train regularly according to their fitness goals and stay motivated. Basic Fit wanted an app where personal trainers and their trainees stay in touch, so coaching and training can continue outside the gym.
The work ran in two phases: first a coaching MVP we validated with members and coaches, then — after that validation — the integration into the main Basic Fit member app, including social features and challenges.
Before / after
Q1 2020 → Q4 2021
Situation at project start, Q1 2020
Cluttered white-label app with poor training content, many features and no personalisation — mainly used for gym reservation.
Result, Q4 2021
Easy to navigate app with prioritised features that can be personalised to a fitness goal and engages trainees to use it regularly, in and outside of the gym.
01
Making the app feel personal
A plan that fits the member's goals and abilities.
02
Keeping members on track
A coach who sees their progress and can react.
03
Keeping members motivated
Training together instead of alone.
How I ran discovery
Insights along the customer journey, not a feature list
Rather than starting from a feature list, we mapped our research insights along the customer journey of members and coaches. That gave the product owner a way to prioritise the functionalities that matter most at each step — and to leave out the rest.
The insight that shaped the MVP
Progress is more than measuring body metrics.
Members told us weight going up can be demotivating even when they feel good, and that a sense of accomplishment matters more than the numbers. So the app shows how well someone is progressing towards their own programme goal, not just what the scale says.
An onboarding that lets members set their own goals, abilities and preferences
It was most challenging to make the app’s experience feel personal to the user. Therefore, we designed an onboarding flow that increases the feeling of investment by letting users set their personal abilities, preferences and goals — and everything after that, from the weekly plan to the coach’s suggestions, builds on those answers.
Start personalising your training experience
How often do you exercise currently?
What fitness outcome do you want to achieve?
How active are you generally in your daily life?
Which exercises and other tips are you interested in?
A weekly plan, visible progress and a coach one message away
A weekly overview of done and outstanding activities encourages users to complete all workouts to stay on track towards their goal. The progress feature visualises important metrics like weight and activity over time for users to track changes.
Coaches can motivate and answer members’ questions via the built-in chat, suggest relevant exercises, send rewarding GIFs or information material. Besides workouts, the app includes nutrition info, recipes and articles.
What the user test told us
In a qualitative remote test we got initial validation of the new value proposition, key functionality and use flow. For members it was most valuable to customise their training plan and get individual coaching through the chat — with the option to ask anything.
Coaches turned out to be keen to send trainees extra information and modify the plan to their abilities. They want to be sure that exercises are executed correctly and would like more control and connection to what their trainees are actually doing.
“Seeing one set of personalised exercises per week is achievable and keeps me motivated to reach my training goal. Although working out from home, I feel more connected to my coach.”
Into the main app
From validated MVP to a coach inside the member app
After the successful validation, the coach feature was integrated into the main Basic Fit member app — an even bigger project, for which my team redesigned the information architecture from scratch. Members can now choose a trainer by location or preferences, see their profile, and once connected, get their weekly plan and chat in one place.
Coach — not connected
Gym members can decide to make use of the remote personal trainer service.
Choose your trainer
Users can select their preferred trainer, by location or applying filters.
Trainer profile
All trainers are introduced with their profile to give users the choice.
Coach — connected
When a coach is chosen, they can personalise the user's training plan.
Chat with coach
Users can ask their coach for tips and the coach can keep the motivation up.
Gym buddies and challenges — training together instead of alone
The product owner wanted to add social features to the app, and I led the discovery workshops to challenge assumptions and explore the requirements from the user’s perspective, while considering technical limitations. The outcome were user stories and hand sketches of the key functionalities, which we refined into a storyboard of how the social mechanism would work.
It was crucial to create meaningful relations between the social and gamification elements, which both contribute to the motivation and loyalty of users. Users can do challenges alone to push themselves, but competing with a friend is even more engaging — so a challenge always ends with the option to share the score and invite a gym buddy to beat it.
Social feed
Social feed
See which workouts and challenges your gym buddies are doing.
Gym buddy
Connect with other gym members to share progress and challenge them.
Invite to a challenge
Do challenges together with other members to gamify the training.
Challenges
Challenge detail
Describes how the challenge works and what it takes to reach certain levels.
Countdown & exercise timer
Triggers the user to focus, then shows the remaining time, their top score and the repetitions per level.
Finished challenge & leaderboard
Celebration for a personal top score, the ranking among gym buddies, and the option to challenge them to beat it.
Outcome
Released November 2021Validated
Coaching MVP validated with members and coaches in a qualitative remote test.
Released
The redesigned Basic Fit member app, including coach, social feed and challenges, was released to the App Store in November 2021.
What I can't show
I'd like to report downloads and coach connections here, but my engagement ended around the launch — the usage data stayed with Basic Fit.
Next case
Unilever — gro24/7
A B2B ordering platform small grocery shop owners come back to — the same routine question, in a different market.
