Empathize

Finding what users are looking for in their training partners

During the secondary research, I reviewed multiple studies, and confirmed the hypothesis that users are more motivated to exercise when they are in a group with other people or have a training buddy. They are more likely to stick to their workout routine, stay consistent, train harder as there's a feeling of competition when training with others, and, as a results, they have a better chance in achieving their goals.

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People who don't exercise,
wished they exercised

People who exercise,
wished they exercised more

User persona based on findings during user interviews

Competitors

Next, I wanted to analyze the competitor apps, in particular, how their users can connect and socialize within the apps. I selected four of the most popular training apps.

Strengths

• All 4 apps are easy to use and have an intuitive navigation
• The apps focus primarily on tracking user progress (running, cycling, fitness)
• The competitor apps provide the ability to join challenges between the users, which motivates users to continue their exercise journeys

Weaknesses

• 3 out of 4 apps do not have a feature for the users to message each other
• Most apps don't have an option to schedule and offline event
• The apps don't allow users to see others in their area and schedule a meet up

Ideating

Defining project goals for the Upear app

I defined project goals in order to set the direction of the next steps.

Feature roadmap

I focused on including the features that would allow Upear users to easily find other athletes in their area based on their sports, skills and other preferences.

Defining steps to create an account and find a training partner

I worked on a user flow to identify the main screens for the mobile app.
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A user flow of a user signing up and looking for a training partner. A user can subscribe for a Premium account that will allow them to create an event for other users to join it. A user on the free plan can browse other users in the area and message them directly.

Creating a new account

User flow with the free subscription

User flow on the Premium plan - Complete payment and create an event

Design

After defining all pages that I had to design, I started ideation with mood board and UI kit, and followed by low fidelity wireframes.

Selecting a theme for the app

UI Kit for the mobile app

Sketches, low and high fidelity wireframes

I worked on the sketched and translated them to low fidelity wireframes to map the main screens for the defined task flow.

User cards' variants

I compared different versions of user cards, focusing on different attributes. Based on the initial user interviews, users valued not only skills, but also personality of their training partner. The third version showcased all important qualities of the athletes.

Low fidelity wireframes

High fidelity wireframes

Prototype & test

In the next steps, I designed a high fidelity prototype and conducted test with 5 people from the target audience. The goal of this step was to test, whether it was intuitive for users to sign up, find other users and events to train with, and connect.

Wins:

• Users stated that it was intuitive to create an account and browse other user in the area, both in the list and map views.
• Users liked the idea that they could see stats of other users, so they get an idea of their goals and current levels,
• It was intuitive to purchase Premium plan and create a new event.
• The design looks pretty and simplistic.

Pain points:

• In the initial design where users and events- were placed in the same list, users were confused and didn't understand the difference between them. During the next iteration, I separated events from users and created a separate view for them.
• The goals and levels questionnaire looks overwhelming. To change this, I added more spacing between questions, in order to achieve more balance.
• On the map view, it is difficult to understand if users saw other users or events. For this, I created different figures for events, to make the difference more distinct.

Final design

After reviewing the user feedback, I made the final iterations to make the app more intuitive and easy to use.