Motive

A beginner-friendly fitness app guiding you through every step.

Phone mockups of the Motive app.
My Roles
User Research, UX/UI Design, Prototyping
Timeline
9 Weeks (April 2024 - May 2024)
Team
Malina Miura, Haley Tran, Aki Sugita
Rory Lindstrom, Jibreel Rasheed, Edmond Lee

Overview

As a fitness app tailored towards beginners, Motive helps them ease into the world of fitness. Motive seeks to lessen the fears from gym anxiety with workout routines tailored to the user's level of experience while combining the social aspect of making connections with new and existing friends. Easily message and motivate your friends while feeling confident yourself through fitness insights provided by Motive.

THE PROBLEM

Start your fitness adventure and get gym anxiety for free! Wait, what?
Some of the scariest challenges that newcomers face in the gym are finding others to exercise with and learn from, while maintaining motivation and consistency with effective workouts.
How might we help complete fitness beginners develop a consistent routine while overcoming gym anxiety?

User surveys

52% of our users were concerned with gym anxiety, consistency and a lack of fitness information.

Looking through the data, I noticed that the majority of our users had a combination of those three problems, with a good portion even suggesting that workout apps should include recommended exercises and premade routines so that they can feel more confident heading in their next workout.
“If you’re new to fitness, what things about fitness do you struggle with?”
"What exercise to do and how much, how often and if my posture or form is correct"
"gym anxiety, actually going to the gym, consistency"
"def. gym anxiety and not knowing like HOW to actually work out in a gym setting"
"i struggle with knowing what exercise to do to target different muscle groups"

User Interviews

What I learned about our users' personal struggles with fitness.

Going through our interviewees responses, we reinforced our findings from our survey; gym anxiety and a lack of fitness information was a major issue. Though that isn't to say we didn't receive insightful answers. Our interviewees noted that being with friends and feeling comfortable enough (such as by stepping out of your comfort zone or by feeling confident with correct information like knowing proper technique or having effective, set routines) was key in fighting gym anxiety.
“Many people go to the gym with preconceived notions, projecting their own thoughts onto others around them, so beginning to work on putting your mind at ease from the fears you have will help overcome it”
“Learning all the exercises that I could do for each muscle group so I can hit every part of the body [avoid being underdeveloped in other areas]”

User Persona

Meet Bella Scott, our fitness beginner struggling with gym anxiety.

Persona of Bella Scott, a beginner in the gym facing gym anxiety.
After synthesizing our user research, here we are with Bella Scott; a beginner in the world of fitness who's trying to feel comfortable enough to step foot into the gym more often.

competitive analysis

Hardly any social fitness apps in sight.

Competitive analysis of FitFriends, GymBuddy and GymLog.
After conducting our competitive analysis, we found that fitness apps tend to focus on being either a workout tracker or a place to find "gym buddies". Considering that our users are seeking ways to stay motivated while also learning as they grow in the gym, we identified that our solution should be to help users who want to achieve fitness goals while keeping themselves motivated by engaging in social activity.

The solution

Yes, let's combine fitness and socializing!

It's clear that we needed to build something that accommodates for the 4 main needs from our users that we wanted to meet.
Connections
Fight gym anxiety by making friends.
Varying Experiences
Customizable and premade workouts for everyone.
Be Informative.
Offer technique guides and fitness insights.
Consistency and Motivation.
Create features that allowed users to meet one another.

Wireframes

Designing the foundations of Motive.

Low fidelity wireframes for the Motive app.
I helped laid out some basic wireframes in regards to the main features that we wanted to implement for our users. Given that we need to tailor our features to beginners, I was in charge of the onboarding process, setting up preferences made by the user so that they can lay the groundwork for what the app needs to offer to the user.

Mid-Fi Wireframes

High fidelity wireframes of Motive, featuring Onboarding, Workouts, and Interests features.
With the onboarding providing the app information on where the user stands in fitness along with their preferences, the app can then tailor workouts as well as connections to help users find people they share similar interests and/or goals with.

Final design

Tell us about yourself.

Let us know your goals, schedule and preferences. Motive will help you transition to the world of fitness.
A gif of Motive's onboarding process. Asks for goals, scheduling and preferences.A gif of Motive's community feature. Browse and share your interests.

Fight gym anxiety together, not alone.

There's always people just like you. Motive suggests to you ideal gym partners based on your preferences. Workout together, learn together.
Motive's Connections page. Find people with similar interests and message your friends.

Workout like you've been at it for years.

With fitness guides and workouts that are built for you, head into your next routine like a pro.
Explore page of Motive. FeaturesMotive's workout page. Details workouts for today, current week and the current month.

The numbers are telling you to keep going.

It's important to take note of your progress. Motive keeps analytics of your progress and consistency and lets you record your PRs so you can give yourself a pat on the back.
Motive's Analytics page. Keeps track of your consistency and PRs.

Reflection

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Our roots started off as the simple word of "a gym buddy app". It was important we constantly communicated with what Motive should feature for our users as well as how to organize Motive.

I had some experiences with gym anxiety and fitness in general, so it was important for me to offer up suggestions on what users should need, such as keeping track of PRs and being able to have guides like technique insights and I was grateful for my amazing teammates for constantly being in touch with what works and doesn't in the work delegated among us.

Research was also key and being able to conduct and synthesize it was crucial in fighting a problem that is so common in the world of fitness. I learned a lot about how to understand users by summarizing a mix of qualitative and quantitative data and then relating to them by placing myself in their shoes.

Moving forward, I definitely would like the time to conduct thorough usability testing, which could not be done this project due to time constraints. I understand the importance of having users actually test our designs and thus this will be something I will enforce in future projects.

Glad to have you here still.