Winner at the Out of Context
Design Hackathon-2021 by IIIT Allahabad
BLIS
ULTIMATE FITNESS SOCIAL MEDIA APP
BLIS
The Ultimate Fitness Social Media App
Project Type:
UX Case Study | Team
Members:
Piyul Patel - UX Research, Information Architecture and Branding
Ritesh Parmar - Visual Design and Prototyping
OVERVIEW
Blis is a social media app that connects fitness enthusiasts with expert coaches and nutritionists, helping them stay motivated and achieve their fitness goals. Users can subscribe to personalized exercise and diet plans and compete in daily fitness challenges with friends. Blis offers a user-centered design, making it an ideal choice for those looking for hassle-free guidance from experts.
This project was made under 36 hours in the
Out of Context ‘21 design hackathon at IIIT Allahabad.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
A social media where fitness influencers connect with their audience. What’s different from YouTube or Instagram? Along with the photos, videos and other fitness tips provided by the influencers to their fans, fans who connect with the influencers (based on a subscription) can compete in daily fitness challenges with the trainer followed.
Newbies in the fitness industry find it difficult to find a proper and personalized guidance which always keeps them on a verge of giving up on their dream physique.
GOALS:
To provide legitimate and personalized guidance from fitness experts, making it easier for newbies in the fitness industry to achieve their goals.
To improve community services and create a social media platform where fitness enthusiasts can connect with expert coaches and nutritionists.
To keep users motivated through daily fitness challenges, personalized exercise and diet plans, and daily motivational quotes.
To create a user-centered design that offers a hassle-free experience for users.
RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS:
We used user reviews on Play Store and App Store to know how and what people felt while using similar applications.
We came across the 4 widely used apps and did an analysis on them viz; Strava, Fittr, Nike Run Club and Fitbit. Details of the same are mentioned below:
USER PERSONA:
We categorized surveyors into 2 different persona groups based on their exercise frequency and location (e.g. working out at the gym vs lazing around at home).
USER FLOW:
Based on the identified issues in our research, we defined the Information Architecture that solved our problems, met our goals with various features ensuring the users should be able to perform a specific task with a minimal number of steps.
CONCEPTS, SKETCHES & WIREFRAMES
Now that we had a clear idea about the system design, we made some quick sketches of low-fi wireframes. We incorporated best practices from fitness competitors and considered numerous ways to showcase motivation and fitness progression.
It helped us take some important decisions in the process.
STYLE GUIDE
The next plan of action was to create colour palettes and typography that would help communicate the brand’s identity and also give the product an exciting feel.
Colors
Typography - Gilmer
Body
Body 16pt Bold
Body 16pt Medium
Body 16pt Regular(Default)
Body 16pt Light
Footnote 13pt Medium
Footnote 13pt Light
Captions
Caption 12pt Bold
Caption 12pt Medium
Caption 12pt Regular
Caption 12pt Light
Caption 11pt Medium
Caption 11pt Regular
Caption 11pt Light
UI DESIGN:
Splash Screen & Onboarding
Screens
Progress section is based on the Millers law, originally proposed by George Miller in 1956, states that The average person can only keep 7 (+/- 2) items in their working memory.
Workout section is based on the Goal-Gradient Hypothesis, originally proposed by the behaviorist Clark Hull in 1932, states that the tendency to approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal. By seeing the achieved tasks, user is now expected to achieve more.
With the badges and motivational quotes (in Feed screen), we are trying to motivate the users to acomplish thier fitness goals
PROTOTYPING
VALIDATION & USABILITY FEEDBACK
We conducted user testing with 7 users on a discord community channel, some of them are below:
Sandeep, 22
Angular Developer
“Progress screen is so cool. Loved it. Through message feature, I can easily communicate with my friends”
Anushree, 27
Home maker
“With the motivational quotes, I feel that I can lose weight. Looks like app pushes me to workout”
INTROSPECTION
Most of the stuff went as planned. Due to various featues, wireframing process took much time.
Challenges
Difficulty to add ‘find coach’ feature
We were unclear about how to place the ‘find coach’ feature. We discussed and after many iterations, we decided to put it into
fitness screen, so that finding coach is now easy to access through fitness screen.
Integration of third party apps and other devices
We were unclear about the where to place more importantly ‘how to’, the option to sync data with other tracking apps compatible with fitness bands/watches or other devices. Due to lack of time on our hands, we decided to skip this feature for now.
Next Steps
We will design for features like live workout session with the coach.
Video-calling option can be added for subscribed users.
Better statistics.
We can add calorie calculator.
Third-party app integrations
Thank you for reading!
