Role: Research, Design, & Prototyping
Duration: March - April 2022 (2 Months)
Tools: Figma and Miro
PHYSIQUE is a fitness app that combines fitness apps and social media together to create an easy-to-use platform, with a simple layout and to avoid overwhelming the user with many functions. Our fitness app focuses motivates, fitness, educating, and communicating between gym communities for users.
Goal-Directed Design (GDD) is a software design process that is based on research that analyzes how users react to a new or changed product, service, or system. In our app process, we implemented the four phases of the goal-directed design for our PHYSIQUE app which are Research, Modeling, Requirements, and Framework.
The research phase of GDD is users and the domain, and it helps to bring a gap between the users and developer. In the research phase of GDD, we gathered a lot of information about what we wanted to put on our app, and then we got together to select what we wanted. We collected quantitative and qualitative data about our fitness app, user research Interviews, personas, and a competitive audit. In order for our teams to make a great app, we had to understand users' goals and needs. We developed a map of all our interviews based on what they had in common and where they differed based on our research and interviews. We employ qualitative research activities such as Kickoff meetings, Literature Review, Competitive Audit, Stakeholder (& SME Interviews), and user Observation/interviews in our goal-directed design study.
We did not host a kickoff meeting for our app because it was a class project. Instead, we completed a kickoff meeting question worksheet. The worksheet assists us in understanding our app and who we are building it for; we are designing it for fitness enthusiasts. Our Literature Review assists us in conducting research and gathering information about how we want to create our app. We examine any literature relevant to our app or its domain, as well as any information they may get on the product domain. Our Competitive Audit assisted us in comprehending the current versions of leading fitness applications such as Nike Run & Training Club, Apple Fitness, Fitbit, Strong, MyFitnessPal, etc... Each app has fantastic features, but we feel they can always be better. We didn't have a Stakeholder (or SME) in our Stakeholder (or SME) Interviews because our app was a class project. Instead, the launch meeting question worksheet aids us in comprehending the needs and objectives of both beginners and experienced gymnasts. As a result, we decided that the target audience would be beginners and experienced gymnasts who want to learn about health and fitness, meal planning, wearable technology, gym accessories, reminders, their gym adventure, and the gym community.
In our users' Observations/interviews we ask questions to our five users and record their responses. We see and listen intently to users' needs and things that they like in a fitness app although significantly more detailed data, observing our users and taking notes helped our simple approach to acquire an objective assessment of our app. By the end of the research phase, this allowed us to build a persona for the modeling stage. We were able to determine what was most crucial after conducting some investigation.
In the modeling phase, we combine all the data that we had from the research and combined it to form our personas. Personas are mixed of users based on behavior patterns discovered throughout our research, which we define in order to create our app design. We establish a grasp of our users' goals in various circumstances by creating personas, which is a key tool in order for us to generate ideas and test design approaches. Personas helped us to determine to comply with behavioral patterns. Personas are based on research and users' real-world observations. The research was used to choose and filter to match our app. After we interviews five people we came up with two personas which are Primary and Secondary.
Roxie is our primary persona, the key target of our app. She is our major persona, and she is a gym newbie. Lucas is our secondary character, and he is a gym rat with a lot of experience in the gym and working out.
In the requirements phase, we pay attention to our persona behavioral specifics of each scenario and the connection between our model. Our design are basic on the behavioral specifics of our personas and goal. Context scenarios are used to investigate how the product may meet the demands of personas at a high level, tell stories about ideal user experiences, and are created prior to the execution of any design modeling. Context scenarios are important in GDD because in our app we start in a "day in the life" of our persona, outlining high-level product contact points of our persona, then progress into greater depth, all while being evaluated against business goals, and desired brand traits, and technological restrictions. User needs or an app need a feature, persona behavior, function, or characteristic of a system are represented by requirements lists. Our requirements lists are formed by our persona behavior, things we want to something wanted and needed in prototyping. Our requirements list our user needs and our app's required features, functions, and systems.
In the framework phase, when we are done with the research, modeling, and requirements. It is now time for the framework of our fitness app. The framework are the design structure and flow of an app. Our team was able to visualize the interaction frameworks, system behavior, patterns, physical form of our design, and visual design system for our fitness app thanks to our requirements list and context scenarios. First, we started by looking at requirements lists and then start to sketch our design on Miro. then, we use Figma to create how prototyping.
At the end of this project, it helped me to understand the steps of Goal-Directed Design (GDD) and why we use it when designing a product. Rather than building a project around little chores and useful features, the goal-directed design allowed us to concentrate on the app development and the app's objective. Assisted us in analyzing data and doing thorough studies to discover our users' behaviors, routines, goals, and competitive audits.
By using the phases of the goal-directed design I understand the technique and intention to understand the reality of users' needs and their behavior, to create a product to interface with, and pursue to satisfy the user's requirements. It helps us to understand users that will use it daily and using, Goal-Directed Design helps us to satisfy our users and improve our software (PHYSIQUE).
