Good Life Health Club Final Prototype
And once again.
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! I am Cohen Aitken-Gomes and today the focus of my blog article is to explain my design process which brought my struggling planning stage to my functional prototype!
I am a digital design student currently studying at Curtin University, I have been tasked with the opportunity to construct a fitness application style project for Goodlife Health Clubs. A front runner in the fitness community, a place of health and diversity where this application would work to expand their current audience to all walks of life.
Taking care of your body is very important, but understanding how to do that effectively is the main issue that plagues us all at times. While researching and brainstorming I decided that overall health can be put into three separate categories that need to be understood in length to achieve a healthy lifestyle, starting off with nutrition.
Proper nutrition is always heavily undermined with users struggling to grasp the basic nutritional value of everyday foods.Everyone has a goal, whether that’s losing, maintaining or gaining weight, knowing what to consume, the amount and when to consume it becomes extremely important in succeeding in these goals. Diet is key (Covington, 2017) to proper health, applications such as myfitnesspal utilise the scanning food technique, using your phone you can scan the barcode of a certain food to get the relevant nutrition information from it. Now with this function in mind, mixed with the ability to choose your own goal, also being able customise or pick an existing dietary plan (bulking/cutting/lean bulking) to achieve a quick and easy path for users to follow to start seeing results.
The next aspect is an obvious one but requires a fair amount of resilience and commitment to keep consistent, physical activity. Being physically active works to release endorphins that work as the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators (Havard, 2020). Access to programs and routines for users allows for a larger user base to accommodate people who don’t like the gym environment or who can’t make it into the gym for alternative reasons, working out from home becomes simple and appealing as it fits the user’s goals and physical desires.
Lastly an aspect that I believed to be extremely important in the construction of this application as a whole, the mental health aspect. Mental health is becoming a much more frequently shared experience from sufferers, although mental stability can halt sufferers from moving forward, trying new things and overall working to better themselves. The GoodLife application will allow for all walks of life to access the mental health support features including positive activities, motivational quotes, stories from other users, etc. Creating a united community who are comfortable with sharing their struggles with others, so people can be motivated and be inspired by their community.
Working on the initial prototype, I would focus on achieving an aesthetically pleasing user experience from the end results of my past project. Sticking with the blue and white colour scheme to match the client palette, incorporating white space by utilising proximity of information to keep equal spacing between aspects to keep them as visible and understandable as possible. With my initial prototype constructed, I would engage in a variety of user tests to see how the wider population would interact with the application functions and see what needed to be altered for final submission.
During my user tests I would find a variety of chinks in the applications armour, basic layout faults, affordances not functioning efficiently, visual hierarchy scattered, font and colour scheme not consistent enough.
My main issues stemmed from the starting process of the application, getting users to choose a certain goal to achieve then pushing them straight into the user flow. Although the user flow was not clear, and would need an introductory process to help the user not only be able to use the application but understand the fine details and functional abilities the app holds.
I worked to alter the first two slides of the app to start, the ‘choose your goal’ page and the ‘home page’.
For my first design, the options weren’t personalised enough, they were too basic and did not alter the outcomes or recommendations provided to the user.
With the new design I am able to personalise nutritional macros, recommended workouts and provide mental health strategies with a more in-depth final goal result. In this assessment I chose to focus on a more specific program for a lean bulk goal, including the macros of a daily calorie goal of 2800, breaking that down to 225g of protein, 75g fats and 250g of carbs. Now with this more in depth information we are able to recommend foods, recipes, potential workouts, etc, with a lot more accuracy rather than a basic ‘lose weight’ goal.
Now with the home page, the original design lacked spatial awareness and did not utilise proximity well enough, resulting in a crammed, difficult to interpret user experience.
Keeping the same images, but addition of text in rounded curved bubbles to incorporate contour bias to look more visually aesthetic and easy on the eye. I was able to construct a simple, yet effective home page, instead of just having set categories posted I used a more conventional home page set up with stories, recommended articles and content that users can read through, learn and interact with their community and their stories.
While viewing the initial home page, I incorporated app pop ups to enhance the user flow experience by subtly leading users through the application to learn and become familiar with the content available. In the user testing, consistent user flow was a constant struggle, but by adding these pop ups through the application first use, it gives a quick and simple explanation of the application to users to familiarise themselves with the surroundings and not feel overwhelmed.
Thank you for your time, stay safe and look out for each other.
Kind regards,
Cohen Aitken
