About The Family Sports app The Family Sports app has different features, such as explaining exercises, testing your BMI and news about Family Sports. However, a lot of Family Sports members aren’t using the app or don’t even know it exists. As a result, they are missing out on a lot of knowledge about exercises, information and news about the company. Family Sports wants to change this by redesigning the app. The aim was to improve the features, user experience and visual design. The more exciting it will be to use the app, the more people will start to use it.
Research I started this project with research, in order to find out what the new app needs to get the user excited about the app so that the user is even better informed and guided about Family sports and fitness. I used fieldresearch, in order to gather as many impressions, opinions and experiences about the use of sport apps. I went to the gym and did short interviews with people who were present. After each interview, I wrote all the important information down on my phone notes. I shared an online survey, to gather as many answers on short questions about searching for information about sports, exercising at Family Sports and exercising in general. I looked at online analytics of the current Family Sports app, in order to find out the most popular functions. I used a heuristic evaluation to look at the current user interface from the view of an expert. This would help finding underlying problems that are not visible for the user themselfs. I used a concurrent analysis and a benchmark in order to look at possible features of direct concurrents. The most important concurrents were compared inside of a benchmark, in order to get an overview and comparison of their functionalities. An extra list was made to show why certain functions would work inside the Family Sports app. With the help of all the research methods, user needs were discovered, that would help shape and create the new application for the Family Sports app. The user needs were prioritised and transformed into user stories and acceptance criteria for the app. The research showed why people like to use their phone while exercising, why people use a certain sport app, what they like and don’t like about fitness, what information they are looking for if they search for Family Sports and the most used functions in the app.
Creating concepts The research gave a lot of User Needs, which created ideas for the concept. It was already clear that the concept would be a remake of the application. However, this could include a lot of different features. That is why several concept scenarios have been made, to show how features could work.
A moodboard was also created to give an impression of a possible design style. The feedback would be used during the design process.
Designing & testing the new app After it was decided which concept scenarios would be used, I started making a sitemap, followed by wireframes. I made a lo-fi prototype from the wireframes and did tests with the target group. After that I made adjustments to the wireframes. To start with the hi-fi designs, I first made a style guide in order to show my client how the app will look and to have consistency in the style throughout the application. After that I turned the wireframes into hi-fi designs. When the design was done, I created a hi-fi prototype and tested it with the target group. I also showed the design to other students and got feedback around the UI.
The Result The final product is a remake of the Family Sports app, as a hi-fi prototype. The application guides the user with training, nutrition and progression tracking. It also gives information about Family Sports itself. New functions have been added, old functions have been improved, the User Experience has been improved and the visual design got an update. Because of this, the app will be better at informing the User about Family Sports, guide the user with their training, diet and it makes the user more excited to exercise. I also made a visual summary, to show the whole process of the project in a visual way.
