Momentum | Teatree Design

Fitness when & where you are

Design a fitness and wellness marketplace app for a user-centric experience and increased revenue for small businesses.

My role & responsibilities

PRODUCT OWNER & DESIGNER

Visual and interaction design, user research, user interviews, and information architecture.

As product owner, I led the ideation of the platform with the founders. I designed the brand, the app for iOS and Android, the web back-office application, the Momentum website, and the information architecture for the Admin Portal (built with Forest Admin) needed to maintain the platform.

Led the team of developers (one frontend, one app developer, and one backend developer) for over a year to build the platform. I onboarded a junior designer to manage the ongoing design work needed to keep up with the expanding vision of the product.

Started March 2020- ongoing. Shipped first release of app and web app February, 2021.

Overview

The wellness marketplace

Momentum was founded to introduce ease and variety to fitness and wellness through the sharing economy. Leveraging existing marketplace design models, it aims to provide a familiar and user-friendly experience.

We addressed common issues faced by fitness app users by creating a simpler, industry diverse-informed layout, ultimately delivering enhanced flexibility and user experiences, which benefits businesses through simplified business management and increased revenue.

Objectives

Easy access

The main goal was to create an app layout for convenient access to fitness and wellness activities, catering to users facing time and location constraints. Predictive technologies would enhance user experience by suggesting contextual features.

Our key objectives included boosting business membership, leading to revenue growth, increased awareness, and business expansion. We focused on designing the app's layout, user interface, and functionalities for stronger user engagement.

Research

User interviews

We conducted qualitative research through user interviews to gain insights into fitness routines, motivation, and app usage. We also interviewed business owners to understand their management and challenges.

Questions for users included app usage, workout planning, pain points, and device preferences.

Questions for business owners covered business management, current issues, member records, and customer acquisition.

End-user interviews confirmed the app's value, with many users canceling gym memberships due to commitment and convenience issues. We also considered potential concerns about onboarding businesses and its impact on both the app and existing customers.

Core users

Based on my research, the average user is:

· B2C: Male and female between 24 – 35. They are working professionals and hardly find time to join health clubs due to busy lifestyles.

Users experience some level of anxiety and intimidation while planning workouts through a fitness app. Many of the people we interviewed had at one time or another been gym members but cancelled once or more due to commitment issues and lack of flexibility and convenience.

· B2B: Small fitness business owner and wellness coaches.

Business owners stated that they face trouble in handling management systems due to being single or small teams, untrained in technology of existing platforms, not enough time to set up and maintain systems.

Design process

Easy access

We needed to understand user pain points and create an optimized user journey and layout that aligned with users’ needs.

We utilized our user feedback in the design process to focus on real-life applications, allowing users to get the most out of the app, with less emphasis on technology. We implemented an open design approach to make content exploration easier and more visible.

To measure how ‘usable’ the app is, we measured three things:

· Effectiveness - Whether a user can complete a task

· Efficiency - How long it takes them to complete a task

· Satisfaction - How the user feels about the task

After consolidating all of the issues and prioritizing them according to their frequency, the data outcomes and brainstorming enabled us to narrow down our approach.

Compare the usability and accessibility of Craigslist to the UX of Airbnb in discovering and booking a place to stay.

Worlds apart! This was the gap we are trying to fill in the fitness and wellness industry.

Solution ideation

With sketches, we were quickly able to develop how the potential solutions are addressing the pain points. It helped us see what the app would roughly look like and how it would flow from screen to screen. User research gave us ideas for what would feel familiar to users.

In our market, we knew that the Wolt marketplace food delivery app and the electric scooter apps were very successful. The discovery phase of Wolt is great when you're in an exploratory phase where as the map search of the electric scooter app allows you to find what you're looking for based more on availability and location. We studied these models to better understand how we could implement this UX into our platform.

User journey

We mapped out the users’ steps to see how we could simplify their journey to help them reach their most important goals with the app. We quickly designed a user journey to understand how users will navigate through the app. We needed to understand user’s habits to create an optimized user journey.

To achieve this, we focused on developing user journeys that are short and simple, universally understood, playful, and rewarding.

Short & simple

B2B

Our research into competitor platforms revealed a significant opportunity on the business side. Current tools for managing businesses within these apps were complex, lacking standardization, and risked businesses losing customers to external scheduling.

Key back-office design challenges included:

Standardizing business presentation and data input
Simplifying payment handling
Managing multiple activities under one business
Effective calendar and scheduling management
Organizing employees and payments
Gathering user insights and reviews
Providing marketing tools.

Identify pain points

Ideation based on similar back office input designed by Airbnb and an early wireframeof the Momentum back office.

Scheduling

The recurring pain point was scheduling management, hindered by some businesses using inadequate scheduling apps. This posed a challenge for synchronizing with Momentum. API integration with these apps was not feasible due to lack of cooperation. Some business owners preferred not to manage both systems.

To address this, we introduced a white-label scheduler within Momentum. It retains Momentum's refined UX/UI and allows businesses to maintain their existing customers independently, avoiding the Momentum marketplace and associated fees. Now, businesses only need one back-office tool for both Momentum and the white-label app, simplifying system management.

Sketch of the white label app integration from the back office

B2B Value

Small businesses typically lack resources for back-office tool development, but our platform offers a complete suite of back-office tools to help them manage their operations and enhance their presence on the app. The emphasis on user-friendly features ensures businesses can easily customize their promotions.

While large gyms may not need Momentum for customer acquisition, it's a valuable asset for small fitness and wellness businesses, enabling discovery, promotion, spot filling, and efficient business management.

Recognizing the importance of these small businesses, we crafted an end-to-end solution that benefits both end-users and businesses, acknowledging the critical role businesses play as customers of our platform, deserving equal or even greater attention than the end-users.

A marketing tool