UX Practices.
Project “Fake Out.”
Project “Fake Out.”
The scope of Project 3 Exercise: Fake Out is to understand how to motivate fitness and disencourage cheating through the usage of activity trackers. Activity trackers, such as Fitbit and Apple Watches, have been increasing in popularity in recent years. Fitness and health is the main goal for these wearable products, but what helps the users stay motivated and prevents them from cheating the system?
Project Scope
Design Space
In exploring the Design Space for fitness activity trackers, we aimed to address the pain points that followed our user group: College students. We decided to start our research addressing complications that came between cheating and motivation with fitness bands. This process led us to interview students who currently use watches. The evaluation led us to understand what motivated students, who vary in fitness levels, and what would keep them engaged with the product we were led to design.
Goals
The goal for our project was to make a fitness product that drives motivation, prevents cheating, and keeps our users engaged. Based on our research, we decided to make a physical product along with an application that can track the users fitness and stats.
Primary Research + Ideation
Our problem space includes the struggle to stay motivated to walk, and that some users “cheat” the tracker system to increase steps rather than earning them. We wanted to look into a design solution which keeps users engaged through behavior change, an analysis of the mental models, and current types of body data tracking.
Personal Sketches
Preliminary sketches were designed based off of user feedback. Users sought out competition and goal completion. Users like the design of the Apple Watch fitness rings and being placed in a competition. I incorporated a ranking system highlighting the user’s placement.
Secondary interviews were performed during this stage with focus around a competition-based step app. Our user group was identified as college students from Purdue University, and began catering our design to their specific interest/needs to increase their motivation, health, and engagement with the product.
Secondary Research
Personas
“I would consider goals, today’s step count, and prize notifications as important features for the homepage.”
— Participant 1
We asked second-round interviewees their preferred design choices based on Low-Fidelity mockups from the primary research phase. Notable user comments include:
“I would like to see a leaderboard to see how I improve against others and how close I am to meeting my goals.”
— Participant 4
Input from Round 2 of interviews led us to create a few final mockups for Round 3 interviewees to provide opinions. Watch band sketches based on market research were created for use with the mobile app. Participants preferred the top half of Leaderboard Option 1, and the bottom half of Leaderboard Option 2. A Home Page with a navigation bar was preferred. Lastly, Option 1 was preferred for the Watch Interface.
Final Solution
Our final design encompasses a catch-all solution to the problem scope while having appeal to our user group of college students seeking motivation to exercise, or a new method of doing so. The home page displays summaries of all important data; users can easily identify step goals, current number of steps, weekly leaderboard stats, and relevant updates amongst peers and individual progress. Clicking on “STEPS TODAY” takes the user to diagnostic charts with data on user progress for up to 1 year. The friends icon on the bottom-left takes users to the Friends & Groups page, where users can check in on their friends and compete in private groups. Users can opt in to join the public groups for their college and see how they fare on the Public Rankings page. Top ranking users can earn rewards in the form of their campus’ currency to be redeemed at participating food marts and dining establishments as method of positive reinforcement.
Step Tracker Mockup
Project “Fake Out.”