Peloton App
Adding features to the Peloton App.
Project Overview
Challenge
This project focused on building features into the IOS version of the Peloton Fitness App that address a problem in the fitness industry - the challenge of building a custom workout routine.
Solution
New workout planning features that move the Peloton IOS App in its established direction, following current brand guidelines.
Tools
Figma
InVision
Miro
Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
Role
Lead Product Designer (Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design)
Timeline
4 Weeks (80 hours)
Peloton is a popular exercise equipment and media company
Peloton is best known for its cycling bike and ability to create a boutique fitness experience at home. Peloton’s mission is to bring immersive and challenging workouts into people's lives in a more accessible, affordable and efficient way.
Peloton currently has a few features that help solve the challenge of helping users plan their workouts:
The ability to create “stacks,” or to string together workouts to build a custom total body workout
A scheduling feature that allows users to calendar workouts up to two weeks in advance
The ability to “bookmark” classes to save them for later
New Features
Through the design thinking process, I was able to create three user-friendly features that helped users build custom workout routines:
A customizable workout recommendation tool
The ability to create workout collections with bookmarked workouts
The ability to share those curated collections with friends
Feature 1 - Workout recommendation customization.
Feature 2 - Creating custom workout collections from bookmarked classes.
Feature 3 - Sharing workout collections with friends on mobile.
Design Process
Exercises and deliverables for creative problem solving.
Empathize
Market Research
Competitive Analysis
Provisional Personas
Heuristic Evaluation
User Interviews
Empathy Map
User Persona
Define
POV Statements & HMW Questions
Individual & Group Brainstorming
Business & User Goals
Product Roadmap
Sitemap
UI Requirements
Ideate
Task Flow
User Flow
Wireframe Sketches
High-Fidelity Wireframes
Mood Board
Brand Style Tile
UI Kit
Prototype & Test
High-Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
Affinity Map
Priority Revisions
Goals, Questions, & Assumptions
Before conducting research, I defined my assumptions, goals, questions, and methodologies so I’d have a plan and reference point to determine if my research was successful.
Key Questions
Who is the Peloton App’s target audience?
What has been the Peloton user experience?
What are people’s frustrations with the Peloton App?
What features do people use on the Peloton App?
How do Peloton App users plan their workouts?
Key Goals
To evaluate competitors in the fitness app industry.
To evaluate trends and threats in the fitness app industry.
To identify demographics of Peloton App’s target market.
To identify opportunities to optimize the Peloton App’s UX.
Evaluate users’ goals, needs, motivations and frustrations.
Key Assumptions
Peloton App users have favorite workouts.
Peloton users want to plan their workouts ahead of time.
“Stacks” and “scheduling” are popular Peloton App features.
Peloton users want to save workouts they enjoy.
Peloton users want to plan their workouts ahead of time.
Market Research
I started with secondary research on the Peloton App’s market to understand what’s currently available to customers and gain insights on industry trends. It helped inform decisions that will provide the Peloton App with a competitive advantage.
Impact of COVID-19 on Peloton
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many people to workout from home, Peloton saw its global subscription revenue go from 181 million U.S. dollars in 2019 to over 363 million U.S. dollars in 2020.
After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, in quarter 1 2020:
New installs of Peloton’s mobile app were up 77% YoY
Daily active users (DAU) of the mobile app were up 52% YoY
In-app purchase (IAP) revenue was up 12.2% YoY
Trends/Opportunities in Fitness App Industry
The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns led to a transition to virtual fitness from traditional gyms as global downloads of fitness and health apps increased by 46%.
Increased awareness of health and hygiene due to COVID-19 drove a 24% increase in the DAUs on fitness apps from quarter 1 to quarter 2 of 2020.
Rising awareness regarding the health impacts of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, is projected to bolster market growth.
Rising adoption of wearable devices, like the Apple Watch and Fitbit.
Threats to Fitness App Industry
High cost of fitness app development.
In December 2020, Apple introduced Fitness+ for Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad.
Many footwear companies such as Adidas, Nike, and Under Armor are investing in health apps.
Fitness apps Fitbit, HealthifyMe, and MyFitnessPal Inc. together held a significant market share in 2020.
Peloton’s Target Customer
Prioritizes fitness, workouts 4+ times/week.
Enjoys the energy of workout classes and looks forward to working out.
Follows an exercise routine w/ multiple types, like walking for exercise + weight lifting + jogging/running.
Spends USD $150+/month on fitness
Aged 25-64, mostly married, with kids.
Equal male/female demographics.
Typically lives in big suburban areas.
Has $100,000 - $150,000+ per year in household income.
Employed Full time. Highly educated.
Competitive Analysis
I continued my secondary research by conducting competitive analysis. It allowed me to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Peloton’s competitors in the fitness app industry.
Provisional Personas
With the data gathered from my secondary research, I crafted some provisional personas to summarize my secondary research findings and to help me screen appropriate people to interview.
Heuristic Analysis
Before delving into user interviews, I wanted to first assess the usability of Peloton’s current app and understand how design principles were applied in the Peloton App and why they work.
User Interviews
Now that I had a better idea of the Peloton App’s target audience, it was time for me to go directly to the user to hone in on their goals, needs, motivations, and frustrations.
I selected user interviews as my primary research method so I could ask real Peloton App users open-ended questions relevant to their experience with the app. I interviewed 4 Peloton App users, aged 24-26.
Empathy Map
After my interviews, I documented my observations in an empathy map to determine if there were any patterns in my participants’ experiences with shopping for clothes online and in store. I was able to cluster similar observations together and develop several key insights, from which I determined my users’ needs.
Key Insights:
Customers view Peloton’s new stacking feature as interesting and useful but intimidating to learn.
Many Peloton Users have a few select workout types they regularly string together.
Peloton users are motivated by the community features the Peloton app offers and use it to share workout recommendations with other users.
User Needs:
To easily adapt new features into their routines.
Freedom to choose workout routines based on preferences.
Community support around working out.
Crafting A User Persona
After I identified the key insights and user needs from my interviews, I combined my primary and secondary research to create a fictional character whose demographics, goals, needs, frustrations, and motivations represent the Peloton App’s target user group. I’ll be designing for Abby. You can learn a little bit about her below!
Defining Users’ Problems
Now that I had a good understanding of Peloton's users I created some Point of View (POV) statements to serve as actionable problem statements that focus on the user insights and needs that uncovered during the empathize mode. Then, I synthesized some How Might We (HMW) questions to open up my subsequent brainstorming session where I explored ideas to help solve the design challenge.
Group Brainstorming
After using the mind mapping technique to brainstorm ideas that might answer my HMW questions, I held a group brainstorming session. For this exercise, I had four participants use the “brain writing” technique to come up with ideas individually before sharing with the group to ensure one person’s ideas didn’t influence another’s.
Strategy
Next, I combined the potential solutions ideated during brainstorming with the Peloton App’s business and user goals to generate and prioritize features on a product roadmap.
Feature Roadmap
I used a product feature roadmap to hone detailed requirements and prioritization. This was a key method I used to turn my primary and secondary research into actionable insights.
Peloton Appmap
With each feature mapped out, I was able to identify the Peloton App’s current information architecture and determine where my new features could plug in. Link to full sitemap HERE.
Task Flows
When I began to think about Abby’s interaction with the Peloton App, it was easiest to break her actions down into a few key tasks that reflected her goals, needs, frustrations, and motivations. This way, I had a good sense of what to start designing first and the paths I needed to the key screens in my design.
User Flows
Next, I went into more detail and determined several different paths that Abby could take to complete tasks in the Peloton App and the decisions she might make along the way.
UI Requirements Doc
Before sketching the screens for the Peloton App’s new features I created product requirements, or a “to-do list” of sorts for the UI and features every page should contain so I had a good starting point going into the ideation process. Check out my UI Requirements Doc.
High Fidelity Wireframes
After sketching, I put together high fidelity wireframes to test the task flows mapped out for each feature. I went straight into high fidelity wireframes after sketching because I wanted to see how seamlessly the new features could integrate into Peloton’s current app and because I was able to follow Peloton’s current design patterns.
Brand Style
As I built my high-fidelity wireframes and prototype, I stated by creating a moodboard based on Peloton’s established brand to make sure it was incorporated throughout the new feature designs.
Peloton’s established brand attributes are: Modern, Motivating, Premium, Enthusiastic, Confident, Empowering
UI KIT
As I built my high fidelity screens and prototype, I also added key elements to my UI kit. This document is a complete list of brand assets and styles used throughout the website.
Building the prototype.
I then conducted usability testing using Invision with my high-fidelity prototype. The overall goal of usability testing was to see if the prototype I created addressed the users’ goals, needs, motivations, and frustrations.
Objectives
Test how easily users can learn to use the two new features added into the Peloton app.
Test whether the users can use the new Peloton app features to accomplish their tasks.
Test Methodology
Evaluative Research, or remote, moderated task elicitation while documenting observations with the thinking aloud testing technique to gain insight into users’ feelings .
Testing it out.
During testing, participants were given the following tasks. They were able to complete these tasks with a 100% completion rate and a 100% error-free rate.
Key Tasks:
Customize your workout recommendations so ‘Mindfulness’ Meditations are included as one of your options.
Create a custom “HIIT, Hills & Hip-Hop” workout collection of bookmarked HIIt & Hills classes
Share your custom collection with a friend.
Usability Test Findings
After testing, I listened to my recorded sessions and documented my observations of users’ behavior. I compiled all my notes into an affinity map which allowed me to uncover the following user insights and frustrations as they pertained to the current prototype. Users were able to complete the tests without any errors so there was relatively little frustration to document. I anticipated this due to the new feature tutorials included throughout.
Key Insights
Users do not expect to have to select meditation as a favorite workout type AND then choose another favorite meditation class type.
User Frustration(s):
3 out of 5 users were confused because they thought there were too many subcategories of meditation classes for them to choose from in the workout recommendation feature.
Prototype Revisions
I then prioritized revision that would address the main user frustration with the prototype - too many steps in the workout recommendation feature, particularly when it came to selecting their desired workout and class types.
My solution was to reduce the number of steps the user has to complete by removing the class type selection screen from the workout recommendation customization feature.
BEFORE - “too many steps”
AFTER - less steps
Reflection
All in all, I was able to create three user-friendly features that helped users build custom workout routines - a customizable workout recommendation tool, the ability to create workout collections with bookmarked workouts, as well as the ability to share those curated collections with friends,
My main learning from this project was that while users want control and freedom to customize their workouts, they don’t want to be overwhelmed with too many choices or complicated processes when doing so. It’s important for users to be able to complete tasks via the most efficient flow possible.
Next Steps
Handoff design specs to engineers using Zeplin.
Continue to iterate using the design thinking process and begin implementing lower priority features.
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