work

FITNIE

1. My first case study for this session is Fitnie, a fitness app. A little bit of context here: when I was working at Targetprocess, a company that produces project management software, we had Orange Fridays which meant we could spend 20% of our working time to work on projects that would help learn and progress as a professional. Fitnie became one of these projects: my teammates, a QA engineer and an iOS engineer and myself got an idea of making fitness more friendly and accessible to people from all experience levels.
2. Problem that we encountered was that “- People that want to start going to the gym and achieve their fitness goals lack guidance and reassurance about their progress. - Experienced gym-goers need more control of their performance and ability to create their own workout programs.”
3. Key challenges that helped us to define the solution were…
4. After doing our homework, talking to professional trainers and researching competition, I created wireframes that helped everyone in the team to align on the vision of the first version of the product and to estimate the scope of work.
5. This is how work in progress looked: as I mentioned I started off with wireframes, then moved into visual design exploration and early enough created a clickable prototype to test our assumptions with target users. Tests helped us iterate the solution early on and save precious time in the development phase.
6. Final design! These were the key screens in the app that’d help users achieve their goals and improve their performance. The screen on the left is the key screen: a stack of cards represents a week — each card is a training. So for example, if the user is going to the gym on mondays, wednesdays and fridays, they’d have three cards in the stack each week. After opening the card, the user can see what exercises they’re going to do today.
7. Onboarding explained how the app worked in 4 simple steps. Interaction of opening/closing training card showed connectivity between the key screen and the training. So it didn’t overwhelm users with loads of stuff and let them concentrate on one thing at a time.
8. WIth professional trainers whom I mentioned earlier we created workout programs that’d match users’ goals, gender, weight and experience level. One of the features of the programs was that repetitions, duration and weights would increase every training. This way, we were making sure that users can progress without too much effort (besides physical one) from their side. Also, the trainers helped us shoot 25-30 video instructions for each gender, in the end it was a simple short video that’d show users how they’re supposed to do an exercise.
9. While preparing for the launch of the app, I designed the product website. It helped promote the app while also communicating the benefits.

OAK

1. (Are you into meditation?) Second case study is about a meditation app, first version was released by Kevin Rose in the end of last year. Oak is best for trying different methods and choose the one that works best at that moment in time. When you don’t have enough time or space for a proper meditation, you can also do a breathing exercise.
2. We used Design Sprint process to help Kevin to redesign the app. 4 people (Jon, cofounder of AJ&Smart, myself, Tim and Rob as product designers). Started like a normal design sprint with an expert interview with Kevin. We discussed the current state of the product, current user types, user needs, types of meditation, whole strategy for Oak as a business.
3. Based on the conversation, we framed the following challenges: 1. Can we make results tangible for the first time users? How do we make sure that newbies don’t give up meditation while not getting the benefits yet? 2. Can we capture and engage both experienced and beginning meditators? Don’t throw off experienced meditators by being too patronising. 3. Can we make the benefits of using Oak very clear to inexperienced users? Comes back again to the first challenge, how do we visualize it? The goal was to help people to get into meditation and to make sure people who have been meditating have a smooth experience with Oak. 
4. This was the current (or previous version) that we were going to redesign. It’s an MVP but with a big community that helped shape meditations - not to throw them off. Oak as a metaphor (visualizing the growth) Simple navigation, hard to switch between disciplines and adjust setting though. People loved having the connection to other meditators (provided motivation).
5. I created this early concept that helped us to start with a discussion of something tangible and explore options around the product.
6. After we got Kevin’s feedback on the concepts, we had a rough idea what we were going to work on: after collecting what Kevin voted on, we made a storyboard out of the concepts and ideas Kevin voted for and started working on the prototype. At this point other team members got busy with other projects so it was on my shoulders to pull off the first direction that could become starting point for the discussion. -OPEN PROTOTYPE- First screen (place to meditate, rest, be mindful, breathe, change) - communicate mood and benefits from the very start. MOOD: watercolors, calm. Onboarding story: telling how our minds have evolved over the last three hundred thousand years, our ancestors to explain how it’s different from nowadays and how our mindset is not adjusted to our daily life and that Oak can help with that. 
7. Previous version of the app had Oak as a metaphor for growth, here, it was up to the user to choose a tree to grow so they’d feel accountable for it and it would help to build a better connection with the habit. Homepage: daily practices - gives quick access to the user’s routines - disciplines they’re used to do more frequently, so nothing distracts them from what they’re here for. Meditate: easier way to switch between disciplines + each one of them has descriptions to communicate the benefits and set the expectations for the meditation. Also, easy to adjust the meditation duration. Grow: celebrating the success and visualizing user’s progress with the tree growth (community stats were going to be in YOU).
8. After having the first version of the redesign we ran a few user tests with people who have been using Oak and a couple of people who haven’t but were curious about meditation. This way we could test our hypothesis and see if our solutions were relevant to both types of Oak users: existing ones and new ones. Onboarding story was received well but a few people would skip it, so it was not very significant for the launch of the new version. People loved that they could choose a tree they wanted to grow. Also, they quite liked Daily practices feature and meditation settings screen. People found growth screen to be very appealing but they missed the community factor. After discussing the feedback with Kevin, we agreed to do an iteration based on the results of user testing. So we went into the concept mode once again (also, you can see the back of my head here, haha so funny). 
9. Final Design: one of the outcomes of the sketching session was that the home screen could accomodate daily routines and encourage users to try out other disciplines while having them visible. To visualize different types of practice we had watercolour landscapes painted by a hired illustrator, while having every discipline being a part of the same picture, almost like windows. We reduced visual clutter on the meditation setting screen so that we have a clear call-to-action as we learned that users were not changing the settings too often. Also, we learned that people loved community feature and missed it from the previous version. So we decided to push in that direction and on meditation completion screen show other people who have just finished meditating and also show their tree peers. Stats screen now visualized streaks and progress to motivate people and help build or maintain a habit. SHOW PRINCIPLE VIDEOS
10. People loved the new version and it was cool to see feedback on twitter almost instantly. A couple of people said that they were about cancelling their Headspace subscription as they found the new Oak to match their needs more (and also it’s FREE).SOLVED CHALLENGES; Dave Askin’s comment. A few people mentioned they’d love having their phone vibrate during exhaling and inhaling while in breathing exercises. Also, quite many people would love to have an Android version. It got on the third place on ProductHunt.