Posh App Fitness

PROBLEM SPACE

Swedish personal trainer Linn Lowes knows how to take on a challenge.

After surviving cancer, she built a huge fitness following, but needed a team to take her mobile app Athli to the next level. I led the charge.

Linn Lowes manages an Instagram following of 3.3mm people, as well as an app with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

PROJECT GOALS

Plan & manage an app platform transfer

Decrease errors and improve conversion rate

Make iterative UI & visual design improvements

ACQUI-HIRE TO PROFIT SPRINT

Appex was created to give people with huge bootstrapped mobile app successes like Linn increased professional standards, less budgetary restrictions, more access to resources, resulting in speed to growth and maximized profits. A deal was struck.

To move this interdependent relationship forward, Appex wanted to act quickly to show marked profit improvement and user satisfaction over just a few weeks. And when time is of the essence, it's important to not lose sight of what the user goals are while accommodating the needs of the business.

Our team decided that while a long-term plan was emerging for larger backend app management platform changes, custom design and development could move ahead by iterating in short sprints. A shallow dive was necessary at first.

The focus was on known and unknown errors, as well as visual design improvements and standardization. Linn had a list of changes. I started making one of my own.

This is a shallow dive.

PEOPLE WILL TELL THE STORY

Frequent repeated actions—like date switching/shifting—were unexpectedly prioritized based on User Feedback.

Prior to our collaboration, survey research had been conducted with hundreds of subscribers, but Athli needed help moving the research process forward. The raw data was there, but the analysis and understanding was not.

What looked like a random set of data was shaped into a distinct set of primary, secondary, and tertiary concerns through a lean, heavy-lifting affinity mapping process, providing a roadmap for design and development.

Not only did I report the sentiments, I uncovered and prioritized the pain points. It was a manual, brute-force effort that provided invaluable insights in a short amount of time.

RESEARCH ARTIFACTS

FEATURED RECOMMENDATIONS

❮ DRAG CENTER LINE TO REVEAL ❯

IT'S TIME TO WORK OUT

Prioritize actionable choices for the user.

A. Create and feature new standards for large tap target buttons.
B. Establish a more explicit relationship between the workout and the calendar. While I couldn't convince stakeholders to replace the confusing stacked circular buttons, I was able to find compromise by replacing Day + (#) with (Day of the Week + Date).

PLANS GONNA PLAN

Promote plans with greater trainer focus.

A. Increase the viewable area
B. Increase the number of plans accessible from home
C. Find a way to display duration
D. Find a way to display trainer names

JUST MY TYPE

Establish a new hierarchical system for type.

A. Correct mistakes in subheadline size and proximity
B. Create a new standard for title size
C. Build more system-level character count flexibility

HEAPING BOWL OF BRAND

Create subtle, iterative changes consistent with the brand.

A. Maintain the focus on photo and video
B. Maintain brand type choices
C. Allow trainers flexibility, but inside of brand

DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS

Yes, this ↑ was an actual piece of user feedback.

Editor's Note: All work was conducted by Matthew Reiswig and other amazing team members in the employ of Appex.

HOW WE DID IT

METHODS & DELIVERABLES (2 WEEKS)

Lean discovery
Stakeholder research
Problem definition
Live remote team experience audit sessions
Data analysis
Affinity mapping, remote
Feature prioritization, remote
Revised plan and subscription flows
Event schema
Iterative design

TOOLS

Fig. 113—Matt walking the team through the design rationale

Product abs of steel

INNOVATION & LEARNINGS

On a tight timeline, this sprint was a huge success. Collaboration and cooperation were high, and trust with stakeholders was strong. The results were a good first step in transition toward success.

Having said that, the shallow dive makes building rationale tough. Taking a couple more weeks to gather and analyze usage metrics and conduct usability tests would have yielded more clarity, especially for high touch experiences like the Weekly Workout.

Hidden in the corner of this project was an incredible success—a pathway toward a new platform that standardizes the data and design so that it can be used for other fitness apps. We're all very proud of that accomplishment and what that means for the company.

As the team at Appex continues their partnership with Athli, I expect we'll see more amazing improvements and innovations.

// CREDITS //

Voyage is the consulting collab of Matthew Reiswig and friends solving problems and blowing minds since forever. | Read at Medium. Connect at LinkedIn.

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