THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO)
Overview
As one way to make people healthier, the World Health Organization (WHO) is seeking ideas for how to change people’s hearts and minds and encourage them to exercise.
This is a concept project that I worked on during my UX design study.
In this project, our objective was to find out the best way to motivate people to exercise by starting with a simple method.
The problem
People want to exercise, but they don’t have enough time to do it, and it makes them feel frustrated when they can’t commit to doing it
Our solution
Create a fitness mobile app that motivates users to exercise by starting with small steps and doing a simple exercise like walking
My role
UI/UX design, User Research, Product Strategy, Prototyping, Usability Test & Iteration
Team
Dayang Nur Nadirah
Francisco Lopez Gastaldo
Tools
Figma, FigJam
Duration
2 weeks
“I want to exercise but I don’t have enough time do it. And it makes me feel frustrated whenever I have to cancel my exercise plan because of my busy work schedule”
From 6 interviews + 30 surveys, we found out that 22 respondents are having challenges committing to exercise. There are 4 main factors on why they are having trouble exercising.
The main factors are:
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Too busy with working
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Lack of motivation
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Lack of energy
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Prioritize other tasks instead of exercise
Data was sampled from 22 respondents
4 INTERCONNECTED FACTORS THAT CAUSE PEOPLE TO HAVE TROUBLE EXERCISING
We discovered that these 4 factors were connected and were causing people to experience a negative feedback loop.
In order to turn this negative feedback loop into a positive one, we thought that we needed to help them create some time to exercise. If they have enough time to exercise, they will be motivated, energetic, and more likely to prioritize the exercise activity.
The negative feedback loop
"I am spending most of my time doing desk work"
We started to analyze the typical daily lives of people that fall into those 4 interconnected factors that we discovered by creating a customer journey map.
From the journey map, we found out that the user’s character is similar with an office worker. They spent most of their time stationary at one place and sometimes walking around. Also, we realized that the user frequently checks their phone in their free time.
These discoveries gave us some ideas on how to motivate them to walk more as the first step toward exercise.
Discoveries on user behaviour from the user journey map
MEET THE BUSY SEDENTARY
From the journey map that we discovered, we decided the "busy sedentary" as our primary archetype.
We also got insights on what they need to start exercising from analyzing the journey map.
Insights on user needs to start exercising from the user journey map
THEY JUST NEED A LITTLE PUSH TO START EXERCISING
We used The Fogg’s Behavior Model as our first approach. Based on the model, there are 3 elements must converge for behavior to occur: motivation, ability and prompt.
The users have low motivation but have the ability to exercise. However, they don’t have the prompt to start the exercise. Therefore, we decided that we wanted to provide them a small prompt to encourage them to begin exercising.
Our approach illustrated on Fogg's Behaviour Model graph
3 KEY CONCEPTS THAT MIGHT ENCOURAGE THEM TO EXERCISE
We analyzed all the possible ideas to encourage our target users to exercise by conducting a competitive and comparative analysis that led us to some key concepts for our solution.
Key concept for our solution
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Social app where the user can visualize the achievements in the real world
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Sense of achievement especially in the long term but also in the short term
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Counting steps as the main feature. Users can do it in their free time and it is completely beginner-friendly
COMBINING IDEAS AND SKETCH IDEAS FOR MOBILE APP
Based on the key concepts, we started to sketch some ideas.
We decided to create a fitness mobile app because most smartphones have the step-tracking feature built right in.
Inspiration from other applications, games, and services
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT OUR DESIGN?
Once we completed the prototype and wireframing, we ran usability testing. Through useful feedback, we iterated on the solution to make it simpler and more understandable.
Our first design concept which was called "The Bakery"
CONCEPT
You can set your number of steps goal based on your desired level.
Get your cake ready by tracking your number of steps. It will start as dough and gradually become a cake based on your progress.
When you complete your daily goal, a nice cake will be ready for you!
FEEDBACK
"As a beginner user, I can’t predict how long does it take to finish 5000 steps per day"
"The bakery theme is not suitable to encourage me to exercise"
"I hardly feel motivated to commit to exercise because I only receive virtual rewards"
TAKEAWAY
Include approximate amount of time for every steps level.
The theme has to be related to health and walking.
It would be better if the rewards could be connected with real-life rewards. Also, encourage the user to walk more.
A FITNESS MOBILE APP - THE TRAVELER
After a number of iterations and feedback sessions, we came up with our first prototype.
A fitness mobile app that encourages users to walk more by enabling them to travel around the world with their family and friends based on the number of steps they take. They just need their phones, and they can do it anywhere and at any time.
WHAT'S NEXT?
We need to test this concept to more people and get additional feedback in order to improve it.
We also suggested some features that should and could be included in the next phase for future reference.
Should have features
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partnership with other companies or services (eg. Insurance company…)
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make a good impact in the real world (eg. plant a tree for every 10,000 steps)
Could have features
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Add different types of exercise (eg. Swimming, cycling…)
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Expand the cultural experience of the user (eg. Interesting facts about places they traveled on the app)
REFLECTIONS
User feedback can be a game changer
We thought the bakery theme for our mobile app would motivate the users to commit to exercise, but the actual result was different. Just from the users' useful feedback, we changed our solution and widened our mind to think of other enjoyable methods that could be applied. This inspired us to develop a better approach, which is the traveler concept.
Good communication and collaboration can produce a better solution
During this project, my team mate and I were actively exchanging opinions and ideas. Whenever one of us gets lost, we will try to help each other so that nobody is left behind. We will listen to each other’s ideas and try to expand them into a better version. Because of these reasons, both of us understood the problem clearly and were able to come up with great solutions.
