Motive
Role: Experience Designer
Duration: January 2024 - May 2024
The Problem
Fitness beginners are often deterred from exercise due to foundational barriers. The most commonly cited issues include difficulty establishing sustainable routines, declining motivation, and a lack of reliable guidance.
A significant challenge was balancing detailed workout instruction with simplicity. Providing accessible, step-by step information without making users feel lost was pivotal in empowering self-driven learning while building confidence.
Process & Experience
Identifying the audience's pain points made it clear the design needed to prioritize clarity, user flexibility, and positive reinforcement.
Progress Tracking: Visual feedback reinforces a tangible sense of progress through incremental wins
Progressive Disclosure: Limiting concurrently displayed workouts reduces confusion and makes consistency manageable
Adaptability: Enabling workout editing in every view simplifies adjustments, encouraging habit building
Iteration
Usability testing revealed that having to navigate to a separate page for exercise instructions discouraged users from seeking guidance. To address this, information buttons were added beside each exercise to provide quick instruction in a visible location.
Interviews found that the interface was displaying excessive and unintuitive information. To simplify the most common use cases, non-critical widgets were relocated, and spacing was increased to enhance readability while reducing cognitive strain.
The Takeaway
Effective Redundancy: Having multiple elements with near identical functionality can simplify navigation and ensures usability when users need instant access to features
Research: Deeply understanding and tailoring to your audience is essential, as insights gained will directly shape the overall product structure and functionality
Optimizing Limited Space: Segmenting related functionality across multiple tabs reduces perceived visual clutter and creates clear, task-focused user flows
