Role | UX Designer
Activity
Objective | Add a Feature within an Existing Product
My Activity Case Study is a school project I created for DesignLab
Skip to:
One of the main features of the Apple Watch has to offer is the ability to track your daily activities and workout routines. The Apple Watch has a comprehensive set of health and fitness tools to help you keep track of your movement, reach workout goals, and get more active in your life. You can change the Move goal, but not your Exercise or Stand goals. After talking to many people about the application and the things they would be interested in changing in this app, my main focus goal for this project will be to create a way for the user to set their own exercise goals and create then own rewards for their goals.
Research Goals
• Figure out why people would choose to use the activity app over other devices like fitbit.
• Find out why people would want to change or update the application if they could.
• Understand what factors contribute to deciding which fitness app to use.
Process
Research Questions
• Why do people choose the apple watch and use the activity app on it instead of fibit?
• Why are people interested in tracking their daily workouts and routines?
• Determine how much people are looking to keep track of their work outs and how often.
Methodologies
Secondary Research: Look at the existing research of the activity application and other competitors.
Interviews: Create a interview guide and conduct interviews.
Market Research and Competitive Analysis: Successes and failures. What else is being used for this type of need and why.
Persona
From my interviews I created a persona that would help for what needs to be modified for activity. What I found from my interviews is that activity doesn't let you set a schedule or create your own personal long term goals with the application. There are other apps that are connected to the app, but it is not within the application that you can make adjustments to your routine.
Competitive Analysis
These are direct competitors of the Activity Application. Most of these are some what even better than Activity, but the main reason why people stay with Activity is because it is connected to their phone.
While conducting interviews I found that a lot of people use Activity because it comes with the Apple Watch, but they also use these applications as well, but for different reasons. I even interviewed a girl that wears both her apple watch and her fitbit at the same time, as well as uses all these applications below. The most interesting competitor is this application called Zombie Run, where the zombies screams only go away once the user is running faster.
Application Map
After doing much research on the application and interviewing around 30 people who I met that were wearing the apple watch and getting their input of their experience, I decided to put together an Application Map of the existing features and also added in the feature that my stakeholders wanted to see in the app. They want to be able to turn off days that they do not work out, so that they can still wear their watches with out it tracking their lazy days. They want to be able to create their own goals in their own time period and also to be able to share the goal they created with their friends so that they felt there is a competition if they wanted to get their friends involved. In the history section where the calendar is, I added a icon where the user can turn off days of the week.
Task and User Task Flow
After creating a feature road map and putting my site map together, I put together a task flow and a user task flow for the new feature I want to create for Activity.
In order for my stakeholders to be able to reach the goals they create they will need to also be able to turn off the days they don’t want to be active, so the application doesn’t track those non-active days and their goals are actually reachable. The green boxes are the new feature sections, but after spending much time with the wireframes and I decided to create a whole new tab for the goals section, but leaving the current users goal details in the awards tabs since that is where the current awards details seem to be in the application. The new feature allows the user to create long term or even short term goals that they can share and also change at any time.
I also decided to create a way the user can adjust this part on their watch. Since the application is connected to other apps, and the user can adjust their daily calories through it, I wanted to create a way the user can update their long term goal any time they want by doing the same thing the apple watch has for its work out app.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Here are some low fidelity wireframes. Since the application is already a product that is fully developed, I decided to sketch out the added on wireframes first before creating some medium fidelity wireframes. I added in the sections from the existing pages. The goal was a create a way for the users to be able to select days they did not want to record as their active days, as well as create a way for the stakeholders to be able to create their own goals, and to share their goals with their connections so they could compete if they wanted to. I also decided to add a whole new tab to the bottom of the navigation bar at the bottom to give the goals their own home. That was the number one thing all the people I interviewed wanted to change about activity. They mention they wanted to create their own personal long term or short term goals and turn off days that they weren't active so they could actually active those goals.
I wanted to make it simple process for my stakeholders so they wouldn't even have to think about how to process this goal they were creating, so I used the activity rings that come in the application, with each ring move, stand and exercise, the user can adjust the daily time and duration and then share it with their friends in case they wanted to join.
Brand and UI kit
For the Brand and UI kit I tried to stay true to Apples existing design and brand. I kept the same colors the application currently has and I only added buttons that would make sense for the CTAs that will be needed for the stakeholders. The buttons for the apple watch are the same and so are the awards and switches. The fun part of this was that for each ring there is a color for that ring, so I made the new feature those colors that go along with the application so that the users know exactly want part of the rings they are adjusting with out much questioning or wondering for the user. While doing research on the app, it was founded that the watch just uses plus and minus signs, so that is why I used the arrows for the time duration for the new feature. I also created a the trophy icon for the new tab that was added for the new feature.
Calories Prototype
New Feature Added
Live Prototype Video
High Fidelity Prototype and Video
Below are the final prototypes I created after much testing and redesigning. I also wanted to create a Watch Prototype for this application since a lot of the people I interviewed mentioned they didn't look at the application on their phone, only on their watch. From my research I found that Activity connects to other apps that allows the user to adjust their calorie goal, and it's only on the watch that you can do that, its not apart of Activity, but it does track the users progress. So I created a prototype for activity that allows the user to adjust their long term or short term goal that they created in the Activity app on their phone, in case they are not able to meet their goal but still want to receive the award they have been working for, because why not? life happens and it feels good to be awarded for the progress you've made.
I tested my prototype with a few friends who loved it and wish they could create those goals that I have added to the app. They liked how I made a section for each ring, in case they are not interested in creating a stand goal, but they would want a exercise goal.
High Fidelity Wireframes
Here are are some of the new screens that I created for the new feature for activity. The first one comes from the history section where the user can update their schedule and the second one is the start of the goal page. Where the user can update or change their goal to any duration they want and it doesn't include the days they have turned off. The second screen is one of the rings where the user can adjust their goal, start it stop it and share it all in one stop. I wanted to create a screen that the user could see and their progress at any point as well. So I created a section where the user can see how far they have gone. Giving the stakeholders some their goal detail and progress, but depending on if they reach their goal it will display the award in the award tab.
Conculsion
There were many interesting take aways from my Activity capstone. It was really interesting to find out that so many people were interested in changing this application like I have wanted to for a few years, and it was a great opportunity that Designlab gave me to be able to create this. Moving forward on my next capstone I want to be able to incorporate the defaulted gray icons like Activity has. I see how it helps with navigation and hierarchy when it comes to user interface design. The original design has the title name below each navigation icon which I felt took up a lot of space, even though I felt like they were easy to understand. I think it my next capstone I wont have names under the icons, so that it creates more of a free space for the nav bar.
For a long time I thought I was the only one that thought it could be in improved, but doing all the research and interviewing so many people, I found that there were a lot of users who felt the same way. It goes to show that even the best and most used products can still use some modifications.