ZenFit App Creation
Reducing Habit drop-off in maintaining long term health goals
UX Final year project - Brunel University 23 - 24
Introduction
Fitness is more than just physical; it includes diet, hydration, and sleep. A holistic approach to health reduces the risks of focusing too much on one aspect while neglecting others. Sleep is often overlooked in favour of fitness and diet, however research shows that good sleep improves motivation for training and nutrition plans.
A study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that better sleep leads to better adherence to exercise plans effectively reducing habit drop-off.
My Role
I completed this project as part of a team. Our teal focussed on reduced on reducing habit drop-off in overall health, each member focussed on improving an aspect of of overall health by creating an app based solution. I focussed on merging sleep and fitness to improve health progress maintenance over longer periods of time.
Results
User Evaluation Tests, Cognitive Walkthrough tests, User Diaries, Final HI-FI Wireframes. Final Grade : 1st
Problem Statement
“Many individuals striving for better overall health struggle to balance their fitness routines with adequate sleep. This imbalance can hinder their progress and well-being.”
Context
Design Process - Research and Context
65%
Only 65% of adults reported a healthy duration of sleep
Literature Review
From a 2018 study under the National Library of Medicine, we have found that 35% of the population do not receive a healthy duration of sleep.
“30-min increase in the time to fall asleep associated with a 1-min decrease in next-day exercise duration”(Kline CE. The bidirectional relationship between exercise and sleep)
Adults should be receiving a minimum of 7 hours of consistent sleep per night
(Reardon et al., 2019)
A substantial 35% of the population receive less that 7 hours of sleep per night.
There are multiple consequences to deficient sleep, including Cardiovascular and Respiratory system illnesses(Aboubakari Nambiema et al., 2023), which in turn negatively effects a persons fitness progression and overall health.
This table I created, derived from a study conducted by the Sleep Foundation, found that the most common activity people do before sleeping is watching TV or streaming using other devices, it is surprising that the majority of the population does this, despite its negative consequences to sleep. This may be an opportunity to educate people on positive sleeping habit formation.
User Persona
Hi! I’m Michael, I have a full time job in the themed entertainment industry. I work from 9 - 5pm, i recently decided to start going to the gym in preparation for a marathon I am running for Cancer Research next year. I mostly aim to get to the gym in the morning before and evenings after work. However it has been difficult managing my sleep, I often sleep late, which throws off my routine for the following day, I sometimes oversleep and miss my morning gym session or become too tired to go to the gym in the evening.
User Story - User Type Beginner
Goals
Michael Woodington, 24
Motivational Factor
Inhibiting Factor
I want to be able to get better sleep on a daily basis, to improve my performance in the gym.
I want to be able to build a solid routine to keep myself on track for longer
I am preparing to compete in a marathon next year fot Cancer Research
I often lose sleep resulting in negative effects to my performance in training.
How might we?
“Balance physical training and sleep to prevent habit drop-off, ensuring a more effective and sustainable fitness journey”
Defining the problem further - User Diaries
In order to further define the problems causing an imbalance in sleep and fitness, I gathered young adults to participate in a 2 week long user diary log.
The goal was to find out how often they exercise and sleep as well as how they felt to gauge a correlation linking sleep and fitness. At the end I asked the following questions:
How do you prioritise and balance these two aspects of your health?
What motivates you to maintain your fitness and sleep routines?
How do social interactions and competitive elements influence your commitment to your fitness and sleep goals?
Difficulty in maintaining consistent sleep patterns and often underestimated the importance of sleep quality. They needed reminders and structured plans to improve their sleep habits.
Desire for flexibility in their fitness routines, wanting to choose from a variety of exercises and create personalized workout schedules.
Users found that social interaction and friendly competition significantly boosted their motivation to maintain regular exercise and sleep routines.
Design Process - Creating solutions
Initial Ideation - LOFI Wireframing
Workout logging and scheduling
This feature allows users to log and track their workouts, ensuring that they are not forgotten during users’ busy lives.
The workout scheduler also highlights important information at a glance, such as exercise duration, distance (if applicable) and when the exercise is planned for.
Input Workout Details
Workout Schedule
More details expando
Workout progress tracking
The second feature within the fitness section of this app is progress tracking within exercises once started. This feature is designed to work with wearables such as the apple smart watch, this combines progress tracking with the scheduler, Live.
Input Workout Details
Input Workout Details
Smart watch variant
Mindfulness and Meditation Hub
This feature aims to improve users sleep via a community driven platform, sharing sleep and mindfulness exercise to relax the mind and improve sleep quality.
Sleep exercises feature a live step by step guide to provide extra support.
Exercise Overview
Mindfulness & Meditation Hub
Live Step by Step Guide
Sleep logging and tracking
This is feature idea for this app. It allows users to keep and eye on their sleep performance and duration. Like the workout tracker, it works well with smart watches or other fitness watches like the Fitbit series, to sync with the app to automatically log sleep data.
Alternatively, users can manually track their sleep if they don’t have a smart watch. By dragging the circular bar, they are able to log their sleep hours, which updates their performance chart.
Updated Data
Sleep logging
User Dashboard and Health Rating
In order to merge sleep and fitness. creating a holistic blend of improvements in relation to health, a health rating scored from an average of a users sleep and fitness data will be available to the users via the homepage.
Furthermore the profile section utilises instant gratification in the form of badges and awards to incentivise progress.
Nav Expando bar
Profile & Awards
Homepage
Information Architecture
Final Designs
Main Dashboard & Goal Setting
Inclusion of improved affordances such as a circular progress indicator...
Progressive disclosure via drop-down menus to improve the flow of adding goal details...
(such that large lists of information are condensed, reducing cognitive overload)...
Final Feature Designs
User Dashboard and Health Rating
In order to merge sleep and fitness. creating a holistic blend of improvements in relation to health, a health rating scored from an average of a users sleep and fitness data will be available to the users via the homepage.
Furthermore the profile section utilises instant gratification in the form of badges and awards to incentivise progress.
Workout progression tracking
This feature seamlessly integrates with a variety of wearable fitness trackers like the Apple Watch or Fitbit. It showcases key exercise metrics, such as calories burned, rotations, tracked via steps, and minutes in progress for activities like Jump Rope. Additionally, to enhance scannability, a large circular indicator has been added to help users easily track their progress during workouts.
Your Mindfulness
Hub
Users find exercises in the community-driven mindfulness hub. Certified users can submit routines/exercises for publication, creating a free library for relaxation and sleep management. Exercises include a live guided tutorial, and sleep tracking is available through wearables or the app.
If I had more time... Further Improvements
Social Ethical Impact
Health Rating
The health rating is scored out of 100 where the user receives a health rating score out of 100.
A potential negative social impact could be that some users may feel self conscious, being scored like a number.
A potential way to mitigate this would be to display the health rating in a more nuanced way such as a growing flower.
Key Touch Points
These are some secondary interactions i could add to enhance the social and community aspect of this app. Firstly allowing sharing of exercises fosters relationships between friends.
Progress sharing helps users share accountability for their progress and allows them a chance to receive recognition. Lastly notifications to encourage users is a great feature that uplifts their confidence and motivation on their off days.
