The Virtual Yoga Coach that helps you with your posture
FlowMo uses motion tracking to guide you through your yoga practice
As more people were looking to improve their well-being, yoga studios increased in popularity over the past years. But suddenly the world had an alarming occurrence that caused many to adapt their habits. Some found good alternatives, while others say that life will never be the same as before. One thing is certain, there are needs that people are facing now and are still not solved. In this project, together with Ina Lile, we went to our surroundings and reached out to people to understand their core needs, based on which we could design an experience that would improve their well-being.
Berlin: young and active
The project started with the brief to design a wellness app that promotes the health of its users. Considering that both my colleague and I live in Berlin for several years, we’ve decided that this city would be the stage to set our research and therefore look at the pain points of its residents.
According to the demographic data of 2020, 55% of the population in Berlin is younger than 45 years old. Furthermore, it is often mentioned as one of the top cities for young people to live in. Among offering a big variety of events, green areas, galleries and spaces to do sports, it is well-known for its music and club scene.
With a sense of care and awareness towards their health, most people incorporate sports as part of their weekly programme. Yoga was one of those activities that saw a big rise in its popularity, which led to the opening of many studios.
The unexpected happened
In early 2020, an unfortunate event of the rapid spread of a virus caused sports studios and music venues to close for an indefinite period. Two of the activities that people were practising the most were severely affected. New habits of exercising from home had to be adopted.
Our first thought was that, by combining a yoga app with the music that people like to hear when they go out, we could create an opportunity for the users to reconnect two worlds that they are missing and therefore end up having a pleasant experience during the practice.
We have created a UX Strategy to serve as the plan-of-action to make sure that the users’ needs were aligned with our business objectives.
Understanding the user’s habits and needs
To validate our first thoughts, it was time to reach out to the people for whom we are aiming to solve a problem, by empathising with them through quantitative and qualitative methods of research.
To get a wide picture of our users and their behaviour, we have sent out a survey through our communities of friends and social media groups.
We wanted to dive deeper into the user's minds and understand what they feel comfortable with and what are they lacking, and what they would like to have improved. For that purpose, we found it essential to set up interviews with potential users. This was a way to get closer to them by observing their reactions and letting them express their feelings and thoughts towards the topic.
We understood that the users adapted to the circumstances by practising yoga alone and set their own schedule, considering that, according to them, it is mostly an individual practice about one’s own body. Besides that, they seem to have some uncertainty on whether they are doing the exercises properly when practising while following an online video.
The problem of fitness apps
To understand why some wellness apps succeed and others fail, we did market research on the factors that contribute to that.
When people are not able to reach their goals by breaking their exercising routine, they often blame themselves for the lack of commitment, instead of considering that the problem could be in the apps they are using. Then they find something new that motivates them at the beginning but with time, they get bored of it. The cycle continues, creating frustrations and lacking goals that don’t have a positive impact in the long run.
As Nir Eyal analysis in this article and his book “Hooked”, what makes Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest so good at changing user behaviour is, among other attributes, the fact that using them is fun. On the other hand, fitness trackers that give the user the feeling that they have to do something they don’t like doing, fail to change their behaviour over the long term. This relates to the psychological phenomenon of reactance, that people tend to resist doing things they feel pressured into completing.
Fitness apps should focus on guiding users and promote the joy for the activity itself instead of setting goals that are hard to achieve and stay consistent. Products that aim to change our bodies without considering the behaviour and mind of the people using them, can have a harmful impact on us.
The users should follow their MEA — Minimum Enjoyable Actions, starting by performing tiny simple actions until it becomes a habit, and then it will be easier to build more habits over time by adding on the previous ones, without much mental effort.
The protagonists
Based on the research phase, we have defined the characters we are empathising with. The primary persona is Carol, who considers yoga as an essential part of her life and looks to follow an app that has the flexibility to choose different levels and intensities, according to what she feels like doing in every practice. Yameli, the secondary persona, wants to connect with her body after an intense day of work. She feels that most of the yoga apps end up creating a sense of pressure to perform the activity, rather than pursuing a relaxing and fun time. Her main concern is that she is not doing the exercises correctly, which can affect her physique.
A journey map of Yameli allowed us to imagine how she would interact with the product along the process of excitement and frustrations.
Defining the problem to solve
Based on the research phase we have found out that our first assumptions were not in accordance with the user’s pain points. When they feel like listening to a different kind of music during their yoga practice, they can easily turn on their music player and browse through a variety of playlists, which usually tend to consist of more relaxing sounds than what they usually like to listen to when they go out. We’ve found the main concerns and what needs to be solved in order to have a pleasant and consistent yoga practice.
Ideating and analysing the competitors
From this point, we ideated possible solutions and features to include in the app that would target the user's needs.
Throughout the process, we have looked at what our competitors are doing and at this point, it was time to lay out a detailed analysis of their identity and features. Down Dog is the most popular app among the people we spoke with. It is a practical yoga app if your goal is just to set a time and follow the instructor.
Prioritizing towards defining the prototype
Some of the apps that try to touch upon some of the problems we are trying to solve didn’t reach a big audience yet, most probably because they aim to create many features instead of focusing on solving the main needs of their users. To not fall into the same aspect and considering the schedule of the Sprint, we had to be clear on the prioritization of what is essential to build our prototype. Therefore we used the MoSCoW method. Then, by doing a card sorting exercise, the users helped us define the sitemap structure.
The sketched wireframes on the contents that we set were the base to build the mid-fi prototype, as follows.
With Desirability Testing, we were able to test some of our decisions towards the logo, colours, illustrations and feature names, before creating the moodboard.
The design system was created by grouping the elements that would allow us to design, realize and develop the product.
Hi-fi prototype
Testing the prototype
It was a constant practice to test our decisions with the users along the process. Therefore, once we had the hi-fi prototype, we also asked people to try out two different paths in the app.
Next steps and key learnings
The final testing that we conducted showed that, for people to start the practice without choosing the level, there was 30% of direct success, which means that the next step could be to iterate on making this path more clear.
Accessibility is also a relevant aspect, which means that testing certain colours and font sizes, among others, is an important part of the process. Considering that the majority of the users will use the app on small screens, the guided audio for correcting the posture should be clear, to give the possibility of doing the exercises even without looking at the mobile phone. This goes side to side with the idea of not putting too much effort into the eyes while performing a practice meant to enhance your well-being.
Overall these two weeks were a good practice on understanding the importance of empathising and testing with the users, to validate our first thoughts and align with their needs along the process. By iterating based on their feedback we are able to continue improving the experience they will have with the product.
