An easy to use and assistive mobile application for fitness trainers to utilize in all of their necessary day-to-day client interactions.
This solo student project was completed as part of the Google UX Design Certificate. My assigned prompt was to "Design a payment app for a fitness trainer". I acted as the sole UX researcher and designer for this project.
Fitness business owners need to limit their time spent on tedious and time consuming administrative work to request, receive and process payments.
Athletassist aims to reduce amount of time needed outside of the gym (administrative work) to run a successful fitness business. So that fitness trainers can spend more time in the gym training, teaching and doing what they love most.
A mobile platform built for fitness trainers.
Adding an extra level of security and privacy, trainers can keep their work-based conversations organized on the app.
Upon any session booking, clients receive immediate pending billing info and payment requests.
Trainers can keep track of earnings and daily schedules, to increase success transparency and organization.
Organization and access to client information and history in seconds.
I wanted to explore current processes further to understand the variety of existing tools and methods to collect payments. I also wanted to understand how trainers charge? Are they charging a flat or hourly rate? Or are they charging based on service? I found that fitness training, even independently from studios can really vary in formats. There is one-on-one, small group and large group training. The overarching idea here is complete customization. Services can be tailored to any services provided or to any need of a client.
I also began to understand, that for independent trainers and business owners charging and receiving a payment, span far beyond the result of simply receiving money in your bank account...A large part of running a business, is monitoring finances, as it is your livelihood.
To begin my user research, I interviewed 10 North American-based certified fitness trainers with at least 1 client.
Going into these interviews I had assumed that the main concern amongst most trainers would be with how they could grow and expand their businesses. In actuality, there were a number of concerns with requesting and receiving payments, security and privacy and providing top service for clients. Especially in a post-Covid world, personal training looks a lot different than it did two years prior, and many of the identified themes address these changes...
"As a part-time fitness trainer looking to expand my side business, I want to spend less time and effort on administrative work so that I can make the most of my time and take on more clients"
Take on more clients, professionally establish services, increase efficiency in administrative work
"Sometimes I find myself chasing after friends for payment", "It's difficult to ensure safe communication when giving out my personal cell number", "Services be provided can change during the session, with no menu price or billing system it can be awkward to make those corrections to the session fee"
Busy while working a full-time job as a recruiter, Cassie is looking to achieve her financial goals and thus, has recently began to train individuals on the side, at her home, online and at her local gym. This year she aims to establish her business further and take on more clients. However, she requires additional infrastructure to organize and maintain her training schedule as well as general accounting and payment collection, as this is currently occupying too much of her time with existing clients.
Persona Cassie walks through the potential journey of charging and billing her fitness clients through a mobile application.
The actions in the initial User Journey diagram were designed to reflect the process of booking a client for a session (starting the session) to receiving payment, taking part in the session and potentially reviewing the session. By walking the persona through this process, I was able to discover a number of opportunities which could be reflected through various features in the wireframing stage...
Throughout the design process, Athletassist underwent 4 major design improvements based on peer feedback.
The final version of the wireframes and screen layout.
The final prototype was created using Figma.
Throughout this project I have come learn just how important the research aspect is in your design. Without taking the time to identify your user and their specific needs through completing usability studies, you will not ever fully grasp the potential impact of your product. There were many moments where I thought a component was intuitive but after testing I found that it was missing the mark. Reflecting on my experience, there are three major points I would like to identify...
This was my first UX project that I brought through each step of the design thinking process, with that being said, I failed to create a stylesheet early on and establish components, colours and fonts. This made the design process and constant iterations and improvements very difficult to alter. In my next project, this will be a major priority, to keep the entire process more organized.
I would love to do another round of usability testing with a greater reach of individuals within the fitness community. Even upon randomization, my testing pool consisted of all able-bodied individuals in both rounds. I would love to further diversify to increase the usability of the application.
In version 1 of my wireframes, the finances page included a goal setting and achievement feature. Due to lack of interest in my usability studies, and greater interest surrounding transactions, I made the choice to eliminate this feature. With that being said, I still think there is a need, as per my initial research, and If I had more time, I would love to roll out a version that includes goal setting,
