Terri Persad
Product Designer
Hi, I am Terri!
A UX/UI Designer based in Toronto
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I pursued the User Experience Bootcamp at Brainstation from July 2021 to September 2021. As part of the program I was tasked with completing a capstone project that involved identifying, planning, researching, and designing a digital mobile interaction that addresses a problem space. This project prompted me to leverage the 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process - Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
Project Type:
An app that assists personal trainers to create safe and effective workout programs by connecting directly to medical professionals who have direct access to their clients.
Client:
BrainStation Capstone Project
5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process
To tackle this project, the 5 stages in the Design Thinking Process were employed to guide the process. Expanding each stage, was useful in defining and tackling the problem space and ensuring the end-users' needs were met through various iterations and testing.
Discovering Problem Space
The patient suffers when they do not have access to well-qualified fitness professionals as part of their treatment or health and well-being plan. Physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide, and more than 80% of adults do not meet the guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities. Fitness professionals can play a key role in assisting people to achieve recommended levels of physical activity. There seems to be a lack of trust between health care providers and fitness professionals.
Secondary Research
3 IN 5 CANADIANS are not enough to benefit their cardiovascular health.
Doctors' LACK OF TRUST in fitness trainers may stem from lack of licensure in the fitness industry. This ambiguity in credentialing may explain why health care providers may be confused about who to trust with their patients’ health and wellness.
Very few primary care providers participate in REFERRAL SCHEMES or prescribe exercise to their patients. activity
Providers report LACK OF TIME training, self-efficacy, and reimbursement as the biggest barriers in helping patients with chronic ailments such as diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure in providing follow-up care.
Hypotheses
Personal trainers will have more success when creating workout programs for all clients if there is access to medical input and guidelines associated to medium to high risk clients.
I will know that I am right
when I see clients, doctors and personal trainers all have a general consensus that physical activity is beneficial to medium to high risk clients AND my user interviews express the need for medical input.
How Might We
HMW improve a personal trainer's workout programs for clients with pre-existing conditions that require medical input or knowledge, so that clients can meet their health and fitness goals?
Primary Research
To achieve further understanding of my problem space and align output to the real problem, I utilized in-person interviews with those in the fitness industry. For my primary research, I created an in-depth questionnaire that addressed, current personal training landscape, positive and challenging experiences, client behaviour from trainer's perspective, and access and guidance from medical professionals.
- All participants work as Personal Trainers
- Participants have worked in the industry for more than five years
- All participants have worked with clients with some variation of chronic ailments.
- No gender or age was specified for choosing participants, also a bachelor's degree was not required, but all respondents did possess a B.Sc or higher.
Affinity Mapping
Once user-interviews were completed, I employed Affinity Mapping to gather qualitative information about my users and group it by category The categories used for this challenge were : Pain Points, Motivations, and Behaviours. From there I was able to further group these categories into themes and insights, which can be seen below.
Medical Support
Virtual Training
Client Consistency
Personal trainers could benefit from clear guidelines and sharing of knowledge regarding health and medical constraints.
Personal training has evolved into the virtual space, however there are challenges in providing the best service and and ensuring client safety.
Client success depends on consistency with their dedication to physical activity and making sure they practice healthy habits in and out of gym.
Medical Support
Personal trainers could benefit from clear guidelines and sharing of knowledge regarding health and medical constraints.
Virtual Training
Personal training has evolved into the virtual space, however there are challenges in providing the best service and and ensuring client safety.
Client Consistency
Client success depends on consistency with their dedication to physical activity and making sure they practice healthy habits in and out of gym.
Key Insight
This theme and insight were selected because user research showed a high frequency of pain points surrounding this topic. Participants felt support in the form of referrals, guidance and overall communication regarding a client's workout routine would be beneficial.
Medical Support
Personal trainers could benefit from clear guidelines and sharing of knowledge regarding health and medical constraints.
Persona
It is fundamental to have a deep understanding of the target audience, who will encompass the end user. Incorporating the user persona helped guide the process to understand, “Who are we designing for?” By understanding the expectations, concerns, and motivations of the target user, the output should be closer aligned to creating a product that will satisfy the users’ needs.
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Experience Map
Through synthesis of user interviews and keeping my persona in mind, I was able to create an experience map, to extract opportunities to help address my problem space. By using the onboarding experience of the client, I was able to uncover some significant pain points and motivations along the way.
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Revised How Might We
With a closer understanding of the persona and the pain points and motivations, I was able to better assess the design challenge at hand and revise the How Might We to direct the process in addressing the problem space.
HMW . . .
effectively educate personal trainers on workout programs catered to people with pre-existing medical conditions so that clients can safely meet their health and fitness goals?
User Story & Epics
From the persona; user stories were created from the perspective of Paul, a qualified personal trainer who cares deeply for his clients health, fitness and overall well-being. Paul is at disadvantage for many of his clients who may have injuries, limited movement or more serious cases such as heart disease, diabetes or obesity. Paul can provide better services to clients if he had access to medical input by professionals directly pertaining to each client's needs. The purpose of a user stories is to articulate how a feature or component will deliver a particular value back to Paul.
As a user
I want to action
so that I can benefit
From the user stories - three epics were pulled together from user stories . The three epics share a broader strategic objective that share a common goal, that support the chosen theme of Inaccessibility as it relates to General Practitioners.
EPIC 1
Access doctor feedback pertaining to client
Real time alerts on client health and vitals can allow Paul to train clients without fear of liability. By having real time monitor of a client's blood pressure can provide confidence for both client and trainer that they are safe.
EPIC 2
Real time alerts on client health and vitals
Access to doctor feedback pertaining to client is a key factor for Paul to create effective workout programs for his clients, especially his high risk clients.
EPIC 3
Tips for a healthy lifestyle
A pain point that came up numerous times, is a trainer's inability to influence a client outside of his/her time with their personal trainer. Providing tips and guidance to take the activity and healthy lifestyle out of the gym is important.
Theme
Medical Support - Participants felt support in the form of referrals, guidance and overall communication regarding a client's workout routine would be beneficial.
Insight
Personal trainers could benefit from clear guidelines and sharing of knowledge regarding health and medical constraints.
Core Epic
Medical Support - Participants felt support in the form of referrals, guidance and overall communication regarding a client's workout routine would be beneficial.
User Story
As a personal trainer I want to work in conjunction with a medical professional when creating workout programs so that I can work towards realistic and effective goals.
Competitors and Design Inspiration
These apps currently exist and provide some form of functionality that can benefit or is incorporated into my proposed solution to my problem space. Trainerize, however is the most closely connected to my product and I have relied on it to guide my product.
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Above shows the sketches that came about from inspiration, influence, research and task flows. The frames seen above represent the Home dashboard for the trainer, the Add to Team form and the Profile dashboard for a client.
From the Sketch phase, I then moved on to create low to mid-fidelity wireframes. These wireframes were used for testing, where users went through the task flow provided to them. From there changes were made based on feedback received.
First to second round prototype
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First Iteration - Header took up too much real estate. Users felt that the schedule was too far down on the screen as the header information was not that important
Second Iteration - I removed the boxes and used icons instead
First iteration - User would select contact card from Contact list and the card would show expanded at the top of the screen. Users felt this was confusing and didn't progress the process
Second Iteration - In the second iteration users would click on the client's contact card and be taken directly to the client's profile page/dashboard.
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First iteration - Users thought the date held more importance that it did. The white space gave hierarchy where it was not needed
Second Iteration -Removed the date completely
Second iteration - Form labels appear above the border
Third iteration - updated form labels in UI.
Second to third round prototype
Second iteration - header updated.
Third iteration - header updated.
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Second iteration - header provided contact, however it was noted that most clients communicate through message and very rarely through phone. Also was noted that it is. not needed to put that they are medium to high risk. The doctors available in the team indicate that medical guidance is available
Third iteration - Added team members and message icon to direct message this client - Barbara Walsh
Brand development
In creating my product to address my problem space, I looked closely at who my product is for, who benefits the most from it and who do I need to appeal to.
Brand Name
This product benefits the trainer, by providing reassurance, knowledge and peace of mind. The trainer is my Primary Persona. This product appeals to the trainer by the access it provides.
For the client, this product brings reassurance and peace of mind. It allows the client to have his/her health and wellness prioritized, with a clear sight of success.
For the doctor, medical professional, or health and wellness expert, this product may be "extra". This persona may be the more challenging of the stakeholders as the benefit is more tied to a sentimental level. With this in mind I considered doctors, in developing the brand, look and feel of this product. Even though, not the primary persona, they are a key factor to the success of this product.
Systolic Blood Pressure - It's normal for systolic blood pressure to rise to between 160 and 220 mm Hg during exercise. Unless cleared with your doctor, a person must stop exercising if their systolic blood pressure surpasses 200 mm Hg. Beyond 220 mm Hg, their risk of a heart problem increases.
Diastolic Blood Pressure - Changes in diastolic blood pressure during gentle exercise are strongly associated with serum concentrations of total cholesterol and insulin resistance. This may contribute to development of hypertensive complications in dyslipidemic and/or insulin-resistant patients.
Due to my app being a fusion between fitness and healthcare, with blood pressure being a great indicator to support safe and effective exercise, I chose to merge the two and the result is: FITOLIC.
Wordmark
Since my brand is catered to fitness trainers and medical professionals under many disciplines in the health care industry, careful consideration needed to be taken into account when looking at design. In looking at my brand, I thought about living, longevity, thriving and health and wellness. This took me in the direction of a tree of life and flourishing, which is why I used a plant as the symbol/icon for my brand.
This design was the first option for the logo. Cursive with the added stethoscope. Logo was not representative of brand.
Orange - #E36414
Black version of first logo iteration
White version of first logo iteration
This is the orange, primary version of my logo.
Orange - #E36414
Font - Copperplate
Black overlay of final design of logo
White overlay of final design of logo
This design was the first option for the logo. Cursive with the added stethoscope. Logo was not representative of brand.
Orange - #E36414
Black version of first logo iteration
White version of first logo iteration
This is the orange, primary version of my logo.
Orange - #E36414
Font - Copperplate
Black overlay of final design of logo
White overlay of final design of logo
UI Inspiration
For my User Interface inspiration, I looked no further than the app store, Mobbin and existing apps that provide similar features and functionalities as my app.
Mood Board
I utilized a mood board to group images, textures, patterns and colours, combined on one page to convey a mood, feeling and/or style. To determine the brand that aligned with my research, goals and target audience, I chose a few words that encompassed what I wanted my user to gain or provide by using my product. I essentially gave my brand a personality, a tone and a presence.
Breathe
Serenity
Peace
Ambition
From my mood board, I was able to pull the primary colours, to influence the colour scheme for my product. In keeping with my keywords and the overall energy I wanted to achieve through the UI of my product. I chose orange as my primary colour as I believed it spoke to personality of my app. Orange breathes life, energy and vibrancy to a person's well being. Paired with light greys, is brings serenity and calm.
In keeping with iOS design systems, I also worked only with iOS colours for this app.
Remove the blind spots and create meaningful and effective workout programs for your clients. Direct guidance from a healthcare professional that knows your client, allows for fluid and transformative experience in the fitness industry.
View PrototypeMarketing Website
To bring attention to Fitolic, I created a marketing website, highlighting the key features as well as the benefits it can provide to personal trainers. I focused the narrative to the target audience - Personal Trainers.
In designing the marketing website, I made sure it was available for both desktop and mobile view. I did not use the app's colour scheme but a complimentary blue and used prototype images throughout to maintain the brand identity.
View Marketing WebsiteExploring Other Platforms
Key Learnings
This app was not easy to design. There were a lot of factors that were essential to make this product worth while. I promoted this product has creating a holistic experience with a 360 degree approach to health and fitness, however, that 360 approach requires a certain amount of input and information from each stakeholder, which made this a bit challenging.
A key takeaway for me, was a having a concrete understanding of what the MVP translates to in terms of functionality. In designing this product, I kept running into roadblocks with features, since one feature requires another feature and that feature requires this input from another stakeholder. In trying to understand the possibilities of my product I took the liberty of exploring the Tarot Cards of Tech to discover detractors or opportunities for future exploration.
The benefits of this app can bring more skill to the Personal Trainer. Also advice given about one client, can be applied to another client who may not be as connected to their doctor as another. A personal trainer can start to see similarities between one client and the other and start using medical guidance and expertise on more clients than intended.
The personal trainer can also start to charge more for his/her services as this medical knowledge he is obtaining can significantly improve his knowledge base.
