TEAM UP
Team up is a project that aims at providing a playful and fun experience of going to the gym. The goal is to help people who want to build their fitness habits stay motivated and be stimulated.
The final result is a gym attendance game. By using social networking and gamification to stimulates players to go to the gym when they feel less motivated. Players form a team, create their own community and compete with the other teams. Team up is a platform that bridge people having same interest together. The more frequent team members attend the gym, the more credits will be earned. Thorugh earning credits, team members motivate each other to keep their fitness habits. With different group challenges, different interaction will be triggered and make the game more diverse.
Company
TU Delft - School project
My role
UX researcher / Interaction & UI designer
Team
Individual Project
Time
2017. Jan.
Background
With the change of eating habits and working hours, people need more exercise in order to be healthy and maintain their body shapes. Going to the gym is a way of doing exercise for most of the people nowadays. When going to the gym, people do not need to worry about the weather.
Problem
The research from STATISTIC BRAIN showed that 67 % of the people have the gym membership but never go to the gym after their first visit.
Therefore, this triggers me to explore the gap of ‘’ people who want to go to the gym’’ and ‘’who make the action’’. How might we help people to keep the fitness habit and improve the experience of going to the gym?
Project process
Research goal
To understand how people experience the journey of going to the gym, how do they motivate themselves to keep the fitness habit and why it is hard for peope to keep the fitness habit. Understanding the context and what are the factors that influence people's behaviour.
Three gym contexts were observed, 2 hours on average were spent in each context. 7 participants were recruited to have an in-depth interview. In the group , three of them still keep the fitness habit, two of them used to go to the gym, one of them is more interested in joining the group lesson and others just started their fitness journey.
Data analysis
The in-depth interview and generative session were transcripted. Some patterns and keywords which were frequently mentioned during the interviewing and sesion were collected and analysed. The visualisation of the data and key insights were shown in the following paragraph.
Key Insights
1. Motivation is the main factor that enables people go to the gym on a regular basis.
Most of the people lost their motivation quickly in the first few weeks, because the workout result (eg, body shape) may not follow what they expected.
Current situation
Desired situation
2. Stepping out and going to the gym is the most difficult thing for people.
Once they were in the gym, they feel more positive. The most positive feeling comes after finishing the exercise in the gym, as they gain the sense of accomplishment. Therefore, the way to bring people out of the door is a main factor.
The emotional change of going to gyme journey
3. Social networking and the connection among fitness buddy are the external motivation that encourage
poeple to keep the fitness habits.
Frequently mentioned key words during interview
Design direction & Idea generation
Base on the user research, going to the gym can be regarded as a journey.
The journey can be divided into three stages :
1. Before going to the gym
2. In the gym
3. After going to the gym.
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During the journey, there are many interactions will influenced users to go to the gym, eg, their own schedule, the fitness buddy, the coach, the location,etc. From the user research and literature review, the design direction is to explore what is the possibility of bridging people with the same interest and forming a community. With the community, people can create the bounding with each other, compete with each other or claim their goals in order to stimulate each other.
Conceptualise
Few ideas were generated, prototyping and testing with the users based on the design direction to get feedback and insight from users' perspective. The main goal of the prototype and testing is to explore the interactions between users and the context. Insights were gathered during the testing session.
©2018 by I-Chun
Base on different ideas testing on the journey of going to the gym. There are three key factors that I found works well in terms of stimulating people to go to the gym while they their motivation decline. People need to work together toward the same goal, meanwhile providing them a platform to stimulate, communicate and supervise each other’s work.
Game
( Competition )
Team
( Dependence )
Platform
( for networking )
Final Design
Team up is a gym attendance game. Players form a team in their network and compete with other teams. The more frequent your team attend, the more steps will be earned to get the reward. Besides, group challenges provide opportunities to win extra steps. Team up is also a platform which help players arrange schedule with their team members. Moreover, each member has an avatar to represent themselves which shows the gym attending status. By using social networking & gamified way, it stimulates people to go to gym even though they feel less motivated.
The game plan for different level
Based on the team size and game level, the game plan will be provided to each team. Teams with the same challenge will compete with each other. The one who get the most steps win the game reward.
User scenario
Testing & Evaluation
Concept evaluation
Three groups of people were invited to participate in the attendance game for two weeks. There are six participants in total. In the beginning of each week, participants were asked to plan the schedule for the next week. Game performance was updated daily, so the participants were able to track their game result. At the end of the second week, evaluation questionnaires were given with the follow- up the interview.
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UI & interaction testing
In the second part, the interface and the interaction of main features in the app were tested.
How do people perceive the user interface of the calendar, challenges, and team performance?
How would they interact with their members through this platform?
From the questionnaire, it shows that people are stimulated to go to the gym by playing the gym attendance game. Within the team schedule and
member status board, players are likely to motivate and remind each other as to win the game. The group task in between are likely to maintain
people’s motivation of the monotonous behaviour of going to the gym.
Future work
Enlarge the community
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Some participants think it would be excited if player can form a team with strangers. Players would like to shift to better performance team. Then, teams can recruit their team members on the open platform, instead of only forming a team with their friends.
Involving gyms in different area
( for networking )
It would also be an opportunity to see the attendance game in different gyms, as it shows the popularity of the gym for players. Meanwhile, it also shows the big data of gym attendance for the gym owner, which is a part of marketing research in different district.
©2024 by I-Chun