GymItOut

Creating a safe and inclusive way for gym goers to feel comfortable working out

Role

UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer

Project Duration

Feb. 2023 - Feb. 2023 (37 hours)

Design Challenge

"Living in a world often divided, it's more difficult than ever to foster community across individuals of diverse backgrounds and perspectives. As a result, we often see marginalized voices being suppressed and devalued as less than. As designers who can create and inspire change, how can we amplify and empower cultures of community and inclusivity in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and beyond?"

"Design your own digital application that fosters community and celebrates inclusivity."

My Design Space

Looking at the gym community, I thought about who I could focus on: there are experienced gym goers, which could include veterans of the space, serious members such as powerlifters and bodybuilders. On the other hand, there are also beginner gym goers, who may rarely go or are hesitant. Playing into my own experiences, I currently enjoy going to the gym, but initially, I felt hesitant because I was scared of looking dumb in front of others, or being unable to lift as much as other people. I feel that I've heard a good amount of similar remarks from family and friends, so I decided that I would focus on that part of the community: beginner gym goers. 

How might we design a technology that promotes a safe, inclusive environment for beginner gym goers in order to foster community amongst all gym members?

User Research

To understand the community I wish to design for, I needed to first learn their needs and pain points. I decided to create a qualitative survey using Google Forms, and asked questions regarding experiences going to the gym. I asked these questions to both beginner and veteran gym-goers in order to understand more perspectives. Notable questions included:

  • When you think about going to the gym, what do you feel and think?

  • What do you wish you could have or do when going to the gym or at the gym?

  • What is your experience meeting people at the gym? How did you feel about it?

I gathered a total of 30 responses total by sending my survey to friends, as well as multiple gym-related Reddit forums.

“I am excite to know that I am working towards getting in better shape…but I’m nervous about what others will think of me…what do regular gym goers think?”

“As someone who is new/intimidated by the gym, I think having someone who is new as well would be great. It’ll be like a support system.”

“"Don’t always know if I’m doing something right or if my technique is any good.”

Survey responses indicated a general confirmation of my initial feelings on beginner gym-goer hesitation. There was a larger variety of responses overall, ranging from preferring to work out alone or not wanting to meet others, but I decided to focus on beginner gym-goers who want to find community in the gym. 

​After gathering survey data, I performed thematic analysis using affinity diagramming to help me organize the collected data and determine insights from the data gathered.

Based on the data I collected and analyzed, I found that a common trend amongst beginner gym-goers is finding comfort in the gym, which is currently prevented by issues such as lack of confidence and fear of being judged. Beginner gym-goers wish to meet relatable people, and be reassured and motivated.

Designing a Solution

Having recognized the pain points of my stakeholders, I began ideating for solutions. As a base, I decided that I wanted to create a 'gym community' app of sorts, that would impact my core stakeholder - beginner gym-goers - but also involve others in the gym community such as veteran gym-goers. To ideate, I created a mind map with the gym community app as the focal point, branching out possible features based on the discovered pain points.

After careful consideration of the possible features, I decided to go forward with gamification, gym sessions with messaging and scheduling, and personal note tracking features. I felt that scheduling and messaging for gym sessions would encourage beginners to find people they're comfortable with, whether it's learning from veterans or finding relatable new gym-goers. The personal note tracking enforces the idea of community within the gym, allowing gym-goers to remember what and when they learned something, and from who. Gamification would motivate users to continually use the app to keep up with fellow gym-goers in achievements. Now, I needed to visualize these features.

I developed low-fidelity wireframes of the features chosen to get a better idea of the product visually.

Once I was able to visually see my wireframes, I thought about which ones I wanted to go forward with, taking into consideration the core point of my app: community. The homepage is essential as the welcome page to the app, the Meet feature is a key feature to realize the purpose of my app in bringing people together, and the Scheduling Session feature goes hand-in-hand with that purpose. Between Personal Notes and Achievements, I decided to forego Achievements because while Achievements may lead to motivation to go to the gym, Personal Notes really fosters that sense of community in remembering those you’ve trained with, and in turn, further motivation. With that, I had my main features for the final solution.

The Solution: GymItOut

For my final design prototype, I created high-fidelity wireframes with an onboarding section, a Homepage that features 'Upcoming Sessions', 'Recent Connections', and 'Connect With Fellow Gym Goers'. Users can navigate the app via the nav-bar with Home, Message, Schedule, Connect, and Profile tabs.

The primary features are:

  • Meet feature allows users to view gym goers to connect with, indicating experience level, location, and what they're looking for. Users can message these people and connect, becoming connections in the Connections page. 

  • Schedule Session feature allows users to create gym sessions to meet up and work out together

  • Personal Notes feature (found in Profile page) allows users to keep track of tips and tricks they get from each gym session 

These primary features of GymItOut facilitate the growth of community that I designed for - beginner gym goers, hesitant to go to the gym, meet fellow beginners or veterans of the gym to feel motivated and meet relatable people. They then schedule gym sessions to work out with their new connections, and via their personal notes, they can remember what they learn and who they learned it from, fostering a strong sense of belonging amongst those who connect with each other.

GymItOut is a mobile app that has been designed and prototyped for the purpose of cultivating a safe and inclusive gym community for beginner gym goers who may be hesitant or unmotivated to go to the gym. By encouraging beginners to talk with other beginners as well as experienced gym goers, GymItOut hopes to make the beginner gym goers feel comfortable going to the gym when they want to.

Click the phone to check out the prototype!

Meet gym-goers of varying experiences

Schedule gym sessions with people you connect with

Personal Notes to look back on and remember your newfound gym experiences

Reflection

Participating in this Designathon was a difficult, but rewarding experience. This was personally my first UX project that I've taken from research to interactive prototype, so a lot of work was new to me. Some challenges throughout this project were that starting off, I didn't really know how to start the UX research. I was unsure about how specific I should tackle the design challenge, what kind of research would be too little or too much, and how to get my sources. Another challenge was definitely the ambiguity and chance of my user research. I used Reddit for many of my responses, so I did get some troll responses. One final challenge was the timeframe of 1.5 days to design and submit a product. As a solo team, I felt a lot of pressure from the timeframe for this challenge.

Going forward with this project, I will have to work on the Testing phase of the Design Thinking process. Due to time constraints, I was unable to test my prototype with actual end-users, so I believe testing can be done to receive feedback and further iterate on my current product. To ensure that I am able to iterate GymItOut productively, I would need to ask end-users whether they feel the app successfully helps them feel community and inclusivity in the gym. I would ask about how my key features affect their feelings and experiences of the gym, and ask whether actual end-users would actually use the app. Testing is an important phase of Design Thinking that I believe will help me iterate in a much stronger direction towards my goal, as you only know if your product works if you ask the people that will use it.