Quick Fiber

A solo design Project

About Project

This was a solo design project. I am a fitness enthusiast and body builder, so I was really interested in understanding other people's experiences at the gym or with workouts anywhere. I discovered other people used apps of sorts to determine their routines and I went further to understand what features were causing them to not have the best user experience. And there, my friends, began my journey to create Quick Fiber.

Problem

Fitness enthusiasts love routines they perform, however, they encouter backlogs in their fitness journey due to demotivation, and this is mostly caused by a lack of proper dieting and the ability to track calories even on certain fitness apps. They're keen on staying motvated by employing fitness trainers or using apps or engaging in communities with like minded people.

Solution

The main solution was to keep users motivated throughout their fitness journey by implementing features on a fitness app that allowed them access to everything they needed.

My Design Process

For this project, I made use of the Nielson Norman Design thinking process, this was to help guide me properly and empathize better with my users. Also allowing me to iterate in each step.

Interviews

I started out my empathize phase with naturalistic observation, where I observed as other gym-rats performed their workouts seamlessly. I knew that there's always another side to things and my biases could be clouding my perception, I decided to get up close and conduct user interviews, get a better grasp of the pain points of different individuals in the fitness community. I did a lot of research on the best interview practices and how to get the best answers from interviewees. I prepared an interview script with 25 open-ended questions, focusing on our target audiences’ experiences, motivations, and daily routines. In 4 days, I recruited and interviewed 20 users physically. I referenced the user interview findings throughout the entire design process.

Personas

I always want to form a deeper understanding of my users' goals, needs, experiences, and behaviors. So, I created 2 personas which would represent male and female. They were based on naturalistic observations and the user interviews which I conducted. I used these personas whenever I wanted to step out of myself and reconsider the initial ideas or just empathize more with user. These personas helped me really understand how my intedned users feel and think. Truly, iteration leads to creation of a masterpiece.

Sketches

I began the design process with low-fidelity sketches and wireframes to accelerate decision-making through visualization without losing time. My sketches were based on the initial user interviews, the users needs, and the heuristic evaluation. I came back to the sketches throughout the entire design process to make sure that I don’t lose sight of my primary goals and ideas. Although in the Hi-Fidelity prototype and final design, there were modifications, this was based on the usability test I executed.

Usability Test

I created a fully-functional, high-fidelity prototype of the new flows using Whimsical and later Figma. At the same time, I started recruiting subjects for the test who fit the criteria. I did 4 usability tests in the first round and 5 after iterating on the issues that were identified:

Usability Issue 01

Calorie tracker and meal suggestions feature

Users were unable to understand where to click to track calories, They also didn't know where to click to see meal suggestions.This issue came up for 3 of the test users. The users then recommended that they would prefer if those features were on the home page as opposed to them having to search for it.

Usability Issue 02

Daily workout recommendation/program

Users mentioned that they were overwhelmed with too many workouts to select from, which made it harder to make a decision on which workouts to go for.

Solution 01

Implementing calorie tacker and Meal suggestions in visible area

The solution was clear; Put these features in a place where they'll be easily accessible for users, because from the start, that was their main NEED.

Solution 02

Streamlining workout program

The solution was to streamline workout programs to reflect which body part they'd be working on per day. This solution was the best as it also allowed me to make provisions for the calorie tracker and meal suggestions to be on the home page.

Wireframes

User Interface

Learnings

Before undertaking this solo project, I always had a misconception that "When designing, I can pass as a user, but going through my selected design thinking process, empathizing, speaking with people and observing them, made me understand that all users are unique, with various mental models and perceptions of the world and how things work. Truly, Don Norman is a genius as he stated these psycholgical biases in his book, "The Design of Everyday Things". At the end of the entire process, I am grateful my Figma skills improved as I was able to delve deeper into more design communities, best design practices and plugins.

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