period:
COMPANY:
November 2014 - May 2015
Magneticwill Inc.
LOCATION:
INDUSTRY:
Remote /
San Francisco (Headquarters)
Fitness
MY ROLE:
UX / UI Designer
MagneticWill Inc. developed software tools for businesses in the fitness industry with products targeted towards fitness staff and end users to increase member retention and loyalty. The product consists of mobile applications and a web based software.
MagneticWill Inc was located in Silicon Valley, CA. and the team was based in both the United States and Spain.
Reporting to the CEO, and working directly with engineering, I was sole responsible for the definition, the UX/UI design and the front-end development (HTML & CSS) of a MVP for proffesional fitness users: a web platform where they were able to track their customer performance offering them extra support and increasing loyalty..
MagneticWill Inc. published an initial MVP in iOS after three months of work and the product was piloted in several American locations. An Android version and a web based version followed right after.
I worked remotely with the CEO and project manager based in Silicon Valley while designers and developers were based in Spain.
Due of different time zones, a great communication and online management tools (such as JIRA and Trello) were critical for the product development knowing what each team member was doing at each moment.
We scheduled weekly sprints starting with a weekly planning meeting where we set up the product strategy, the outcomes we would achieve at the end of the week and the tasks that each one would assume. We also had a 15 min daily scrum where each team member explained what they have done the day before and what they would be doing that day, resolving problems together as a team if were needed.
Sprints were finished with a user test or product demo run by the project manager in Silicon Valley. After the feedback provided by users we scheduled a sprint retrospective that would impact in the strategy for the next weekly sprint.
The project manager was the one based in Silicon Valley, closer to American market so she worked on the customer discovery, interviewing potential users, organizing focus groups, running user tests...
In a weekly sprint, I had a first meeting with her to synthesize the current research in the user needs to solve during that sprint. We talked about different ideas for the new user flow to design before prototyping.
I worked to define the UX of new features using sketches and low fidelity wireframes to validate the user flow with the project manager besides of high fidelity wireframes to define pixel-by-pixel the interactions and the visual style of the web platform.
Although the other designer was focused on the mobile apps we used to catch up on a daily basis to give feedback to each other improving our works and keeping us updated of other project improvements.
Once the interactions and the visual style was validated with the team, I worked close to developers to build the app being responsible of the front-end design.
When I joined the team, the CEO & project manager had been already working during one year on an extensive research about the different types of user in the fitness industry, analyzing their jobs and pain points to discover their needs.
While a first MVP (an app focused on the end users) was been testing and increasing users, it was time to scale the product to a full market solution where professional fitness users (gym staff and personal trainers) were able to track their customer performance offering them extra support and increasing loyalty.
- Help clients reach their goals.
- Provide them with right workouts to achieve client’s goals.
- Continually motivate them to stay in track.
- Collect payments from clients.
- Acquire new customers.
- Client don’t see results and gets demotivated - stops paying.
- They need to convince clients to come at least 2 or 3 times a week to get results and to have secure money.
- They don’t know how much they will be making next month.
- Scheduling can be a mess, especially when clients move sessions.
- Lack of visibility and influence of what clients do outside of their sessions.
- They match new clients with personal trainers for assessments and classes.
- Scheduling group classes for max attendance.
- Manage payroll of instructors, trainers, bookkeeping.
- Keep the gym/studio a place where people want to come. Tidy, good customer service, events, diverse events, etc.
- High turn over in trainers, instructors. Constantly looking for talent.
- Customers who don’t use the gym enough will not continue paying the membership.
- Instructors and trainers train at different locations and have a followership.
- Revolution coming to fitness with business models where customers are encouraged to go from place to place with no loyalty at very cheap prices.
- Similar as independent.
- Don’t need to worry about payments.
- If the employer have systems (to do assessments, scheduling) they will use it.
- They are still payed depending on the number of clients they train.
- They get paid 50% less of independent so they think about leaving and starting their own business.
- Gyms will provide them with some new customers but they are still responsible for bringing referrals, etc..
- Some of them will have customer in and out of the gym.
- Client don’t see results and gets demotivated - stops paying.
- They need to convince clients to come at least 2 or 3 times a week to get results and to have secure money.
- They don’t know how much they will be making next month.
- Scheduling can be a mess, especially when clients move sessions.
- Lack of visibility and influence of what clients do outside of their sessions.
- Low pay.
- No good feedback mechanism from customers on how the class was.
- Need to prepare for their classes.
- Conduct the class, keep everybody engaged, showing how to do it.
- Be inclusive of newcomers but keep regulars happy too.
- Get customers to come back.
A first critical step in designing for new users was to define the new entities attributes and their connections. After creating a first sketch it was crucial the approval by all team members as it would impact in all products, apps and web platform.
Besides of defining the product entities and before prototyping, I started structuring all entities attributes that would be needed in the product based on user need and the business strategy we were following. Starting from the smallest attribute and try to logically group them give us a clear overview of the web platform scope.
Graphics like this one help me to communicate with the team excluding misunderstoods and to easily talk about possible changes. They were also very useful for developers, they could get started with the backend infrastructure while the design was refined and finalized.
Parallel paths for software development and design are the fastest route to reach an actual experience.
We provided a weekly report to the gym managers with and overview of their members engagement in Magneticwill.
This report was also a great tool to track our success related to the development of new features.
