Case study: How wellness can be boosted thanks to community
The health and wellness industry has been experiencing immense disruption due to advancements in technology. Today's consumers are embracing wearable technologies and other activity-tracking products more than ever before.
👨🏼⚕️Our client
The Wellness Institute wants to explore how they can leverage technology to help people live a healthier life. However, they noticed that despite the vast availability of personal metrics and health apps, people continue to struggle to stay on track.
The Wellness Institute wanted us to present a new mobile app designed to support wellness. The only requirement is that it tracks the user’s progress and pushes them to commit to a healthier lifestyle.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many of us to stay at home and be sat down more than we usually do. It can be tricky to do any form of exercise, especially for those who used to train in fitness gyms or any team club. Not to mention those who usually hardly do any physical exercise.
However, it has became more and more crucial that all population maintain a certain level of activity to avoid any physical conditions.
At a time when technology is everywhere, we could think that there are numerous ways to maintain our activity even when going through such tough times.
Is there actually another way to help people be more accountable with their activity goals?
After our research phase, we came to realize that the solution we needed to focus on wasn’t actually related to tracking at all…
Let me guide you through Thunder Squad, the solution we built from scratch with my dear team mate Morgane Favchtein.
At the beginning of the project, we did have an idea which was to focus on a coaching and nutrition solution for vegetarians/vegans (or those in plant-based diet transition).
As a matter of fact, we did have some points that needed to be undercoverd before starting digging deeper into the subject:
- Do vegans, vegetarians have difficulty doing sports because of their diet?
- Does their way of eating have an impact on their physical activity?
- What has changed in their life regarding their sport habits since Covid-19 started to hit our daily routine?
📊 Survey
In order to understand the general trend, we first published a survey on numerous Facebook groups dedicated to people who have an interest in vegetarian and vegan lifestyle, other groups were more sport focused. In order to have a complete pannel of respondents, we also asked people who don’t particularly practice sport intensively or have a special diet. A total of 165 people took the time to answer our survey and the results were pretty surprising to us as it didn’t turn out exactly how we were expecting:
- 80% of our respondents changed their habits because of Covid-19
- For 34.5% of our respondents, their activity has decreased, and they train less than before. But 19.1% still keep an activity at home.
The Wellness Institute wanted us to develop a solution about tracking their users’ activities. So we thought necessary to ask if people were actually using applications or digital devices to track their nutrition and physical activity, and the reasons behind it.
- For more than half of the respondents, they do not use a tracking application.
And here’s what the respondents actually think about tracking health data:
“I don’t see the point of doing so”
“I don’t have the time to track everything”
“It’s time consuming”
“It is actually too much pressure and stressful”
“I feel constrained”
“I never think about going on the app”
“I feel like I will disconnect from my body and stop listening to want my body wants”
Regarding our questions in relation with vegan/vegetarian diet, no major issue got through the survey: only 6 people thought that combining a plant-based diet and sport was “incompatible”. At this point, it was unclear if a real pain point would actually grow.
🎙 Job to be Done interviews
While waiting for our survey responses, we conducted 6 Job to be Done interviews. Most of the interviewees were vegetarians, vegans or interested by the topic of healthy eating. The aim of those interviews was to understand their sport journey and their relation with food.
Just like for the survey results, eating vegetarian or vegan was clearly not an issue for our interviewees. We decided to focus on their sports habits instead and let them talk about the following subject:
“Last time you did sport before and during COVID-19”
Here are the main insights we could extract from theses interviews:
“COVID-19 has changed things, I’m much more sedentary. I even have health issues now.”
Julien, who is 33 years old, used to have the strict minimum level of activity before Covid-19. His commute to work was actually for him a sort of exercice, as his work stuff can be pretty heavy. The distances he was walking helped him reach a minimum of 10k steps daily.
Since Covid, he has mainly been working from home and his work needs him to stay sit sometimes for 6 hours straight. This sedentary and stressful situation has even caused him huge health issues with severe back pain that now prevents him from working.
“In a group, I have more motivation, it could have helped me to keep my activity level.”
Emilie is really the kind of person who enjoys life through the spectrum of her social circles. She used to train at the gym 2–3 times a week, with at least 2 session with friends. She finds this way of training much more motivating, as being in a group made her accountable towards her peers. Now that she spends most of her time at home, she just stopped doing any physical activity. She finds her working routine so exhausting that the idea of doing any sort of sport makes her see this more as a torture than a way to decompress. She would have been more active if she was offered the possibility to train in a group, even remotely, with a playlful dimension.
“Having a sport partner allows to combine social life and sport, especially today.”
Gwendoline, 29 yo, is a real sport girl, she is doing sport at least 4 times a week. Before Covid-19, she used to run after her day of work but now due to the lockdown, she’s going out on her lunch break to run. She feels really constrained because her company didn’t change her schedule to fit with the lockdown, so she had to opt for this solution if she wants to stay active. On weekends, she does a serious sport session on saturday mornings and enjoys being surrounded by someone, it helps her get motivation and is a way for her to socialize at the same time.
“You quickly get bored on online platforms… But when I run with other people, it motivates me more and pushes me to go further.”
Sylvie, 40 years old, loves to do sport. Covid-19 didn’t quite change her activity level because she first started sport at home thanks to an online platform. However, she got bored after completing the whole program of the platform. Also, she finds it easy to skip a training session when it’s only you and your screen, no one is behind your back.
“During the 1st lockdown, we could do our sessions outside, now it’s more about boredom than lack of discipline.”
Stéphanie, 26 yo, a yogi girl, lacks humanity in her practice. She missed the time when she was sharing good times with other people at her yoga studio. Now, even if she manages to do sport at home, she gets really bored.
🚀 Empathy Map and Journey Map To Be
Gathering all our research, we were able to visualize our findings into a Empathy Map that helped us understand what our interviewees thought, felt, heard, saw, said and did last time they did some physical activity.
When observing our data, we were starting to see some pain points emerging and it actually helped us find the starting point of our project.
“The routine blocks me and I get bored of online content”
“I have trouble to get motivated and doing the exercises well when I am alone”
Now, to better empathize with the user, we built a user journey map of Julia.
Since Covid-19 happened, Julia finds it difficult to do sport and make some room for it in her agenda, she’s doing remote work and finds herself not socializing anymore, she misses the time when she could go to the gym and meet new people.
Another day, another curfew. It’s 6PM, Julia has worked all day long, barely had the time to have a proper lunch break and barely moved from her working station. Now, she can’t go out anymore, she’s fed up with the situation and decides to look for online content to get some physical activity. She finds a Youtube channel with great content, and decides to wake up early the next day to start her new training routine. Days after days, Julia finds the motivation to follow along the video program but after 2 weeks, Julia starts struggling to get same motivation because of the routine that is kicking in: she decides to stop. For her own sanity, Julia finds it vital to still have a physical activity, and reaches out to her best friend to plan a sport session together. Saturday morning, the two friends meet. Julia is so pumped by the efficient training and the convivial meeting that she wants to meet her friend on a more regular basis. However her friend is not available, Julia is really sad and frustrated.
This user journey map helped us come up with 2 mains HMW:
- HMW guide the user into a fun, friendly and interactive training?
- HMW help people get company and feel supported during their trainings ?
Using worst idea and crazy 8 tools, my team mate and myself had a fun time finding ideas to adress those two HMW.
The two ideas that draw our attention were:
- Book a sport session with someone you don’t know
- Connect with people around you, especially with those who have the same interests as you, and practice some physical exercise together.
🥇 Feature prioritization
Overall, it soon became clear that our solution would connect like-minded people so that they can train in real life or remotely, and never feel alone again, especially in times of social distancing when it’s hard to meet new people.
Based on our MVP, we chose 5 features that we would implement in our product:
- Find users with the same goals and passions
- Sport categories and level sorting
- Be able to book a sport session with someone you don’t know
- Be able to connect with the person before the meeting
- Create an event near you and invite your mates to do sport
Once very clear about the features of our future solution, it was time to get the prototype done.
🖌 Wireframes
We first started with low-fi wireframes. Morgane and myself are often mind-connected and we actually had more or less the same idea of the layout. We just combined our wireframes together to have our final low-fi wireframes.
We then created a mid-fi prototype of the app.
In order to assess our solution, we did Usability Testing on our mid-fi wireframes, with 6 users. By doing so, we were able to understand what needed to be changed on our app.
Firstly, on the homepage, it was important to the users to be able to search quickly for an activity so we added a search bar.
We also changed our navigation bar because most of our testers didn’t understand the different functionalities, the icons used in the first version seem to confuse them. Also, the application being centered around community events, it was important to add a straightforward way to add an event to the community.
On the location tab that enables to user to see nearby events and sport mates around, we decided to remove the list view to showcase people profile pages and we changed them into rectangles instead where you can see the user name and not only its quote.
Also, we got rid of the small icon indicating the number of mutual mates, as user found it useless.
We changed how filters were displayed and added sorting buttons in a more accessible way.
On the event page, we gave more details such as level, duration and location of the event. More info about the event were also added such as equipment needed, the number of participant maximum.
The map turned into a simple line of text.
Also, our tester found it too easy to join an event and suggested that the user who wants to join an event has to be approved by the organizer, just to make sure that serious people are joining the event.
Finally we decided to remove the map as the users didn’t use it during our usability testing and didn’t see the point of using it.
🎨 Brand attributes, Moodboard and Style Tile
Given the approach of our solution, we wanted our future users to feel safe using the app, while having a good time getting to know new people with the same interests. That’s why we wanted to define our app as sharing, friendly and dynamic.
Those attributes led us to this moodboard with pictures of people who enjoying being together, practicing sports together, and a sense of accomplishment.
Here is the style tile for Thunder Squad, where you can find the modern typography, vibrant brand colors, friendly iconography used through the app. We’ve also included all the components that can be the basis of future products of the Wellness Institute.
📱Hi-Fi prototype
⚡️ Welcome on our app Thunder Squad.
First you need to sign-in to have access to the app. Then you will have a small survey to help us personalize your in-app experience, that’s why we ask some questions to know more about your habits related to sport.
On the homepage of the app, you can find sport events and sports mates around you. On the location tab, you can either browse events or people around you, you can even use some filters to find the perfect event/person for you.
You can then go and check someone profile page: you will be able to see the events the user has joined, his/her activities and your sports mates in common. Back on the event page, you can request to join an event, the organizer will review your profile. On the calendar tab, you can see your planning and events that are still pending for approval. Once approved you get a notification and can have a conversation with the people of the event you’ve just joined.
Also, the more you use the app and have sport mates in favorites, the more you start to see your mates’ events and get suggestions based on your mates activities.
🚀 Next steps
Working on an MVP project, we had to focus on the main solution. However, we already have a clear idea of what needs to be done to perfect this first attempt of Thunder Squad:
- We would like to add a form for people who want to join an event visible by the organizer, that would help him/her take the decision to accept the user’s request to join
- We would like to offer the possibility to connect with your IRL friends and organize private events
- Link the app with Apple Activity App or other tracking devices for those who still want to track their activity
- Given the current restrictions in some countries, adding some Covid related pop-ups and information messages would be wise. Ideally, this app would be used in a safer sanitary situation, as a way to connect back again with the community.
💡Key Learnings
At first we thought that people were into tracking and connected devices. However, our research proved the contrary. It seems like people are really caring about real-life social interactions now more than ever.
If the app was to be developed any time soon, we hope that Thunder Squad would be able to satisfy users in that sense, help them maintain a level of activity or find the motivation to get started.
Thanks for reading, we would greatly appreciate your feedback 🙏🏻✨
