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Simplifying the Workout App

Fail Faster. That was my main take away when making TRACK. Digital Product Design is no simple task and requires multiple attempts and iterations of hard work. From drafting personas to constructing a final prototype I faced countless mistakes and blockers when making TRACK. I remember thinking how easy making an Apple Watch app would be, I was very wrong.

I want to share with you, the world, on how my initial design of TRACK came to be. TRACK is a workout app on the Apple Watch platform. The app draws inspiration from the Nike Run app and attempts to satisy the needs of busy athletes, who like to workout with as little app engagement as possible.

I always found that workout apps have constantly fell short of perfection. Every workout app I have used in the past has never stayed on my phone past two weeks. This made me question whether other users of workout apps felt the same. As expected, many were not a fan of workout apps and did not keep theirs installed for that long either. I realized there must be a problem workout apps share that one app has not resolved; what is it about these apps that make users uninterested so fast?

I began to question friends, family and random users of workout apps around campus. The two largest complaints I heard were workout apps didn’t feel personalized to a user’s needs and inputting rep and set data was a chore to do. I focused on these two issues and began to ask more questions related to both topics to my audience.

For personalization, I was told workout apps hardly ever recommend correct workouts for what user’s wish to accomplish in their workouts. I was told that the apps would suggest workouts that were popular or performed by a celebrity or bodybuilder. There was never a sense of “this workout was made for you.”

For inputting data, I was told people didn’t like having to input rep and set data during their workouts. Most told me they tend to forget to do it and/or would tell themselves to do it after the workout ended. Because of this, many would uninstall their apps and try to mentally log their workout progress instead.

Combining these two topics into one I began to draft a persona and a problem statement to get a general idea of what my app should do to solve these issues. My problem statement became:

Now that I had my problem statement, I knew next would come my persona. This is a part where I found myself failing multiple times. I first started by picturing who my user would be. I came up with a busy athlete who liked to spend as little time as he could on apps when working out. However, when using this persona I realized it was still much too vague. I needed more information on my persona and reasons as to why he wanted to spend little time using the app during his/her workouts.

This is what led me to Dwayne Grey. When interviewing my friends and family on what reasons they have for not inputting data or using their workout app, I found that most claim they would just forget to do so or would find it complicated to do so. I also found that most did not like designing workouts in their workout apps and preferred just being told what to do and doing it immediately. Thus, came my vision for Dwayne.

Dwayne Grey is a 25 year old athlete who is very busy and hates designing workouts. He has poor short term memory and tends to forget how many reps he has performed and/or never inputs his reps in general. Dwayne also likes to be able to check his app as little as possible so they can he can simply workout and listen to his music with no interruptions.

This persona unfortunately contained too many needs. Because of this the app I designed was only able to focus on Dwayne’s need for simplicity and recommended workouts. I was not able to design Dwaynes need to have the app tailor workouts based on his diet and goals, only previous workouts. I also was not able to design an app that made it so that Dwayne didn’t need to remember his exercise information. If Dwayne were to forget what he did the app could not help him. In retrospect, I should have focused on one or two giant need(s) from my persona and not a massive variety of them at once. This caused too many ideas to be forced into production at once.

When designing TRACK I drew a huge inspiration from Nike’s Training Club and Run apps; primarily I drew ideas from Nike’s Run app on the apple watch.

I think the Nike Run app does a wonderful job of using basic colors and large simple buttons to make their entire design look easy to use. This was a goal of my TRACK App which is why I utilized a yellow and black color scheme with large buttons and layouts.

To satisfy Dwayne Grey’s need for simplicity I wanted the app to appear simple and intuitive to use from the start. I utilized the Apple Gothic font because it made the app seem friendlier and thus, made the idea of doing workouts easier and more approachable.

I ran into an issue of deciding what was the best way to display workouts and exercise information on the small Apple Watch screen. I asked Apple Watch owners for input. I was told to utilize the Apple Watch screen entirely for the workout and use bare minimum navigation elements. Thus, I designed the following exercise pages that were able to convey the routine step by step along with what exercises follow it.

The first page shows the current exercise and the next exercise along with a timer indicating the passing time of the exercise being performed. Simply clicking the left and right of the screen would then show the user the stages of the exercise. I utilized dots on the bottom of the screen to indicate that the pages were a slideshow of steps. Taking this approach, I was able to make use of the entire Apple Watch screen to show the workout and simplify user engagement.

However, I found myself questioning what these screens would become once a user performed workouts that weren't time based but instead dependant on reps and sets. Apple Watch users informed me that empty dialogue boxes were obvious indications of user input utilizing the Apple Watch wheel. Thus, I relied on this user familiarity to design the pages for rep and set dependant workouts.

To satisfy Dwayne Grey’s need to jump in a workout without thought or need to design a workout, I emphasized a Jump Right In mode on the home screen. This mode generates a recommended workout immediately based on old workouts in the user’s history.

Users can also jump right in to old workouts without a second thought. I wanted to make sure there was never anything stopping a user from just doing a workout immediately.

I was told by users of the apple watch that the history log screen was too congested and uneccessary because it seemed like it would just slow down the user when browsing.

However, I was also told the Jump Right In options and workout pages were done very well and made it clear to users what they were doing. Users were given the ability to just perform a workout immediately and they didn’t feel overwhelmed by the workout page because it only showed the workout and timer.

I was also told to make dietary input an option to assist the crafting of recommended workouts, along with a more clear directory of workouts to choose from if one would just like to do a single exercise over many. Users felt they were obligated to perform more than 8 exercised and thought the app needed to provide the ability to just jump right in on only one or two exercises.

Facing all these issues and failures I am now determined more than ever to continue failing and see my app through. I am currently drafting dummy data sets and teaching myself Swift and Machine Learning Algorithms to help develop a real functioning prototype with my designs implemented.

Adding to my designs, I plan on adding a dietary input option along with a mode to freely workout as one pleases without the feeling of obligation to more than X exercises.

I plan on redisigning my history page such that it appears simple and is easier to read for users who wish to spend as little as time as possible on said screen.

Finally, I plan on adding a sleep screen that can be used by users to completely separate them from the app while the app somehow monitors their workout progress. This would fulfill the ultimate no interruption workout need by Dwayne Grey.

I hope to see this app come to reality with these features, and as weird as it is to say, I hope to fail many more times. Thank you to ENTR-390 for helping me get to this point and teaching me the skills and techniques behind good digital software design.

Thanks for reading!

I hope you enjoyed my initial designs of TRACK!

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