National Wellness Institute

We all know that taking care of our own health became even more important nowadays.

Representing the National Wellness Institute, an organization that is focused into promote health and quality of life, in this 4th project me and my team formed by me(Diego), Ana Luiza Fontana and Luisa Koyama, were hired for creating a tool to benefit people and bring them more life quality and health.

Brief: create a High Fidelity Prototype interface program which is focused on supporting the professionals that lead the health and wellness area. We had to give them some kind of digital tool in order to benefit people that need their support.

The National Wellness Institute covers several health sectors and we had to choose one. We chose “exercices and physical preparation”

This prototype was demanded to be a mobile interface (Android in our case)but it also had to be responsive with a second platform. We decided for Desktop.

First steps

To enter this complex task, first we had to understand its professionals and users. We didin’t know what and for which user the solution would be delivered to. Our tool would be used either by the professionals or users. So emphatize with them and fully understand their matters was fundamental.

Researches

Throught many internet readings the three of us searched and found many contents about how people behave and face the physical exercices nowadays. We came with several information reporting principally the Covid-19 post pandemic scenario and the online exercice classes growth! According to The American College of Sports Medicine’s research, this new online exercising type is being ranked as the most growing method in 2021. People doing all kinds of workouts throught their devices alongside with their professionals performing all sorts of physical training that includes: bodybuilding, weight lift, dances, running, ioga and so many other modalities. It’s surprising how people are really engaged and adopting this new way of training!

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Our interviews

Throught qualitative interviews each one in the group needed to uncover all the points of view: both the professionals and practitioners. I was able to interview 6 persons that practice physical exercices in their routine and also 2 personal trainers. Ana and Luiza interviewed more people too. The objective here was understanding their routines, falicities, way of training, difficulties, matters and pains and also find out if they used apps that supported into those tasks.

Answers and statements

Having all the feedbacks and gathering all the answers, we realized that professionals, more specific “Personal trainers” that prescribe bodybuilding workouts would carry a great responsability and needed more support. They expressed the online classes as one of the things that they were being hired for. But then comes their difficulty: they can’t guarantee that the clients would perform the exercices correctly, keeping correct posture during these workouts and activate the target muscles. Taking real chances of injuries and harm themselves. Therefore, we had our problem established. Both professionals and clients stated been using mobile apps in order to obtain all kinds of training and instructions.

The competitors

Me and my team went throught an analysis process to understand who and how these competitors apps operate and what kinds of tools, funcionality and services was provided by them. Most of these apps had videos and several trainings prescriptions, but none had the solution to our issue. That gave us an opportunity to this matter. Something we could be working on…

Ideation

Having our main user as the Professionals and understanding their real problem, we now had to write down all our ideas and create a big brainstorm of every possible way that could be transformed into a mobile and desktop app that would lead these users into an effective and easy way of giving their clients the best and complete training prescriptions in order that these people could be oriented on the workout’s right postures and muscle activation and experiencing an effective and safe training.

Persona

The persona we created is “Julio”. He represents a professional personal trainer who has several online clients which he prescribes workouts routines for each one of them. His great difficulty and worry is : via online he can’t ensure these clients execute the exercises the way they should. Taking risks and not reaching their goals and harming themselves during this process.

Our path for Prototyping

I can easily say that these part was our real and most difficult challenge. When we started to think about how these app would look like and how it would work, we always ended up to the clients side instead the professionals that we were working on. I mean, we wanted to help these peolple so much that we would cross into their clients usability even that it would be designed for the professionals to use it. Anyway, it’s so easy to link the professionals problems that are directed linked to their clients, and to confuse our real user target here.

Creating the Prototype

After some mid fi prototypes drawings we knew what and who we were designing for. Our funcionality concept here was creating the Personal trainers an interface that conteined all their clients, chat by text and audio messages. These program would be carring an extense list of all most used bodybuilding exercises with it’s basics descriptions, sets and reps. And above all, the most important tool: adding each client a specific note on how to execute the exercise the right way, upload media files such as videos to demonstrate in motion the exercise being executed. Take it easy! I will show you how it works on practice down below with the Hi Fi images and short videos:

Mobile version:

Here's the first entering screen, with our app logo

After a delay a Greetings animation is displayed

He(Julio) sees a notification on the "Chat" tab.. So he taps on it

He now navigates througth his clients conversations screen, and notices that Dani has sent him a message. He taps on it..

He’s taken to Dani’s message that displays her feedback on a specific exercise. She complains about not having a good experience on the training she just executed. Julio answers her back with an audio and text message to support her. Then he taps on the “go to exercise” blue button on top of his massage

Now Julio has some options for Dani. He selects the first one “Personalized guidelines”. A dropdown window displays a note space, he taps the blue button to add one. He types an orientation note for her and then he taps the button to save it

The green bar confirms that it was saved

Julio taps on the “midias” tab to complement the orientation with a midia upload file. He selects “Video”. The video is uploaded alongside with the note and now he can instruct Dani both ways to ensure a complete understanding on that specif exercise

Desktop version:

We follow the same navigation with a little bit more screen space

In this case, the user access the desktop files for midia upload

Conclusion:

We believe this app offers more communications tools between the professional and the clients, providing them much more accurate instructions on their trainings.

Next steps

To improve this app, we wish finishing the other present features development such as the clients progress and building their trainings.

It’s in your plans building a smart watch app version.

I hope you enjoyed this solution. Be free to comment and giving me your feedback on this content. Thank you all !