Overview
Context: A concept project for the IxDF Design Thinking course, aimed at addressing the common challenge of sustaining exercise habits.
Role: UX Designer (end-to-end: research, ideation, prototyping, testing)
Tools: Figma, Photoshop
Timeline: 2 weeks (course project)
The Problem
People who want to exercise often feel too tired after work, embarrassed in social settings, or uncertain about how to begin. Current fitness apps focus heavily on tracking and data, which can overwhelm beginners instead of motivating them to take the first step.
Business/User Need: Create a product that helps users build consistent activity with small wins and playful interaction.
Ignored reminders: even with fitness notifications, users often default to passive habits like watching TV instead of exercising.
The Process
Empathize
To understand the challenges and motivations people face when trying to stay consistent with exercise, I combined AI-assisted research with simulated interviews. First, I scraped and analyzed comments from fitness forums and social media using AI, which surfaced recurring themes around streaks, accountability, and the emotional ups and downs of building habits. From these insights, I created three virtual personas: Alex, Jamie, and Rina, each representing distinct user struggles identified in the data.
To go deeper, I conducted mock interviews with these personas using AI, simulating realistic conversations based on the themes discovered. The interview prompts were derived from IxDF resources, ensuring that the process followed user-centered design best practices. This approach allowed me to quickly explore potential user insights in a cost-effective way, while still keeping the door open for real-world testing in later stages
Key empathy Insight
People know exercise is good for them, but their relationship with it is deeply emotional and tied to identity. They crave control, confidence, and health, but are easily derailed by boredom, lack of quick results, or guilt spirals when they miss a day. Designing for them means lowering the barrier to starting, rewarding small wins, reframing “exercise” as enjoyable movement, and building forgiveness into the habit loop.
This section shows the affinity map and empathy map that capture key themes from research, together with cultural probe photos documenting daily exercise helpers and blockers.
Define
Through affinity mapping, we uncovered that users face significant barriers to consistent exercise: limited time and energy after work, unpredictable schedules, gym intimidation and fear of judgment, guilt spirals after missed workouts, and an all-or-nothing mindset.
At the same time, users revealed strong latent motivations. They want to be healthy role models for their families, see themselves as disciplined and resilient, relieve stress and gain mental clarity, feel confident in their bodies, and enjoy encouragement from supportive friends.
These insights highlight clear opportunities for design. The app should make space for flexible, short workouts, provide safe and private alternatives to gyms, track progress and streaks, deliver gentle, supportive reminders, foster community accountability, and introduce fun, low-pressure entry points like VR or casual movement to lower the barrier to starting
User Needs & POVs
Time-Efficient Workouts
User: A busy parent or professional with long, unpredictable days
Need: Short, flexible workout options
Insight: Small wins restore pride, but exhaustion and family duties often derail routines
User: A busy parent or professional with long, unpredictable days
Need: Short, flexible workout options
Insight: Small wins restore pride, but exhaustion and family duties often derail routines
POV: A busy parent needs short and flexible workout options because unpredictable days and fatigue make it hard to commit to long sessions.
Safe and Private Environment
User: A beginner exerciser who feels judged in gyms
Need: A supportive, private way to build fitness
Insight: Fear of embarrassment shuts them down, while gentle nudges or home workouts help them restart
User: A beginner exerciser who feels judged in gyms
Need: A supportive, private way to build fitness
Insight: Fear of embarrassment shuts them down, while gentle nudges or home workouts help them restart
POV: A gym-shy beginner needs a private, supportive way to build fitness because fear of embarrassment keeps them from exercising in public.
Motivation and Habit Support
User: Someone who often starts but struggles to stay consistent
Need: Motivation to sustain long-term habits
Insight: Guilt and loss of visible progress cause them to give up, while progress tracking and encouragement reignite effort
User: Someone who often starts but struggles to stay consistent
Need: Motivation to sustain long-term habits
Insight: Guilt and loss of visible progress cause them to give up, while progress tracking and encouragement reignite effort
POV: A person who struggles with consistency needs motivation and habit support because lack of progress and guilt make them stop altogether.
Point of View Statement
Users who want to improve their health face emotional, social, and identity-based barriers. They need an accessible, empathetic, and motivating solution because it helps them overcome shame, unpredictability, and judgment, enabling them to build healthier habits gradually.
“How Might We…” Questions
- How might we lower the intimidation of starting exercise?
- How might we help users recover quickly after setbacks?
- How might we design routines that flex with family and work demands?
- How might we make small wins visible and rewarding?
- How might we create a safe, welcoming environment for beginners and returners?
- How might we help users recover quickly after setbacks?
- How might we design routines that flex with family and work demands?
- How might we make small wins visible and rewarding?
- How might we create a safe, welcoming environment for beginners and returners?
Ideate — Diverging Concepts
From the same research base, two promising directions emerged.
StepUp
A minimal streak-based habit tracker. Users log short activities, build streaks, and celebrate quick wins. The focus is on simplicity and momentum.
CritterQuest
A fitness app that turns workouts into a collectible quest. Stay consistent to help your pets grow and evolve, unlock blind packs with new companions, and complete rare sets you can showcase or trade.
Prototype
Low-fidelity wireframes were created for both StepUp and FitPet. These evolved into high-fidelity screens showing onboarding, tracking, and motivational feedback.
CritterQuest Prototype Flow
Users begin with a welcoming screen and a short personality quiz that assigns them a starter pet, creating an instant sense of ownership.
From there, they enter the dashboard, where streak progress and pet status are always visible alongside quick access to workouts, challenges, collection, and shop. Logging a workout is designed to be straightforward, with fields for activity type, duration, and intensity.
To keep motivation high, users can join weekly or daily challenges and earn in-game currency, which is then used to unlock blind packs containing new pets or items.
Consistent workouts allow pets to evolve from Apprentice to Guardian to Legend, while missed sessions trigger neglect cues and prompt a recovery challenge.
This balance of reward and gentle accountability creates an ongoing loop where users feel invested in both their own progress and their pet’s journey.
StepUp Prototype Flow
StepUp begins with a short onboarding process where users are introduced to the app and guided into onramp workouts designed for beginners. This helps build early confidence while easing new users into consistent activity.
Once inside the main dashboard, users can view their current streak, select workouts, and track their progress. As they demonstrate consistency, workouts adapt — gradually becoming more challenging or unlocking advanced levels to match the user’s growing ability.
Beyond solo training, StepUp introduces a social layer: users can issue or accept friend challenges, with the app pairing participants at the same level for fair competition. This adds variety and community while reinforcing accountability.
Together, these features create a loop of steady progression, friendly competition, and personalized adaptation, ensuring users stay motivated and engaged over the long term.
Test
Usability testing has not been conducted yet. For the next phase, I plan to start with paper prototype tests to validate the basic flows, followed by interactive wireframe testing in Figma. This approach will help gather early feedback and refine the design before moving into high-fidelity development.
Design Focus
StepUp
The prototype is intended to focus on three key areas that will guide future validation: a clear three-step onboarding process to help users get started, lightweight activity logging to reduce friction, and streak tracking as a metric to measure consistency and long-term motivation.
Critter Quest
The prototype is intended to focus on three key areas that will guide future validation: a streak-based progression system where pets evolve through consistency, a reward loop that uses in-game currency and blind packs to maintain engagement, and gentle accountability through recovery challenges when streaks are broken.
Expected Impact
For StepUp, the design goal is to simplify onboarding by reducing it from six steps to three. For CritterQuest, the aim is to foster higher engagement and stronger emotional connection through gamification. Both approaches present clear potential: StepUp focuses on simplicity and ease of adoption, while CritterQuest emphasizes motivation and sustained participation.
Reflection & Next Steps
A key learning from this project is that different personas are drawn to different approaches, but playfulness and small wins consistently prove critical for sustaining engagement. One of the main challenges has been finding the right balance between fun and function, especially with limited time for testing. Moving forward, the next steps include conducting broader usability testing, evaluating accessibility, and exploring a hybrid concept that combines StepUp’s clarity with CritterQuest’s engaging, gamified elements.
Thank you for reading.
