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Design Process

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yeyuu7 edited this page Oct 25, 2018 · 72 revisions

Phase 1

For our previous concept, we have 4 functions: workout planner, routine selection, result sharing, and reminders. However, after the proposal presentation, we got some feedback from classmates and tutors, most of them think our app can’t stand out from the others in the market, because the concept is just a fitness application with standard features but there is nothing really that ‘forces’ users to work out daily. So, we did some research and read some papers, we come up with a new concept which is using digital pet to motivate people. People can interact with a digital pet: they can play with them, feed them and bath them. Users have to be physically active a pedometer, such as walking, running, or jumping, if they do more exercise, they can get more food for their pet. And by ranking the level of their pets to motivate user to do exercise.

User Research:

  • Conclude findings based on domain research
  • Think about problem space and user requirements
  • Think about how we can satisfy user requirements with innovative methods

Potential Tasks to do before Stand-Up 1:

  • Conclude user requirements based on domain research
  • Refine our concepts based on user requirements
  • Trying to make a low fidelity prototype for our concept

Stand-up 1:

Before stand-up 1, we refined our concept based on the findings of background research, and finished our first prototype. On the stand-up 1, we demonstrated the first version of our low fidelity prototype and told our concept to tutors, tutors expressed that they thought our concept may be executable, but the design of some parts is lack of the support of user research, such as we did not sure which kind of pet the user would like, but we choose to use cat to be the pet. We think the most important feedback from stand-up 1 is it made us know we did not understand user requirements in some areas, we need to do further user research.

To do before stand-up 2:

  • Modify low fidelity prototype based on tutor’s feedback - Ye
  • Create interview plan(for testing low fidelity prototype) - Fan & Ruoran
  • Create online survey form(for knowing user requirement) - Fan & Ruoran
  • Conduct user test - All people
  • Analyzing the online survey result - Fan & Yuchen
  • Analyzing interview result - Ruoran
  • Iterate low fidelity prototype based on users’ feedback(results of the online survey and interviews) - Ye
  • Study Arduino and other technologies for high fidelity prototype - Yuchen
  • Style guide -Ye

Online Surveys for understanding user requirements:

  1. Do you like do sports? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeylkSJEorTTXYwRziWub_Ss6KS5n7eeJqyUphIkGAv8FiI2A/viewform?usp=sf_link

  2. What do you think the ideal fitness app would be like? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc3gW4llEjFO13SExXGsEysxFpsvi618aGgFhipa7AXEWCoJg/viewform?usp=sf_link

  3. What kind of pets do you want to have? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeqF3y1vZmPzxFN_kqPZKL8jhrIvpAI840oIHs0R2TRHlWrfw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Data Analysis of online surveys

Do you like do sports?

This questionnaire is used to survey people's exercise situation and find out the factors that can motivate them to exercise. There are several questions in our questionnaire survey, they are:

  1. Do you do exercise as usual?
  2. How long do you do exercise each time?
  3. How long do you do exercise each time?
  4. What kind of exercise do you like to do?
  5. Do you think you can keep doing exercise daily?
  6. What method do you think will encourage you to do exercise?

Based on the result of first question, we find that there are 60% testers do not do exercise as usual. We can deduce that more than half of people don't exercise regularly. And there are only 12.5% testers do exercise daily. That means, most people do not have a good exercise habit. Meanwhile, According to the survey data, 37.5% people exercise for less than half an hour at a time, and only 18.8 percent of people exercise for more than one hour at a time. Connecting with the exercise they tend to do, and we find that most exercises should be lasted for a long time, such as running, playing ball and swimming. However, according to the survey data, they do not take enough time to do exercise. Irregular and inadequate exercise does not work well, so we want to fix the problem. If we can effectively encourage people to do exercise regularly, it's very helpful for them.

To find a true strategy to encourage people to do exercise regularly, we do some interviews about people’s willing about what thing can push them to do exercise. There are many different answers, and we collated the respondents' answers and summarized the following points. The most common advice is to give players rewards to encourage them to keep exercising, while others say losing weight or making friends is their motivation. Only a few people don't know what motivates them to exercise. However, we can't offer financial rewards to users, but we think we can give players rewards in other ways, such as letting them play a small game or keeping an electronic pet and they need to exercise to keep the game going or keep the pet alive.

What do you think the ideal fitness app would be like?

Since our idea is to make a fitness app, we need to investigate people's views on existing apps on the market, find out the advantages for reference, and focus on improving the disadvantages. We have the following questions:

  1. Have you ever used any fitness app?
  2. How long have you been using the fitness APP?
  3. What would your ideal fitness app look like? What function would you like it to have, or how would it motivate you to exercise? (For people who never used any fitness apps only)
  4. What do you think are the advantages of the fitness app you've used? (For people who have used any fitness apps only)
  5. What do you think are the disadvantages of the fitness app you've used? (For people who have used any fitness apps only)

According to the survey, 81.3% of the respondents have used fitness apps, while only 18.7% have not used them. It can be said that fitness apps have a very large user base. At the same time, due to the large number of users, the questionnaire is more convincing. For the second question, there are 18.8% testers who have used fitness app for less than one month. Exclude some people that never used any fitness app, there are still 62.4% testers who have used fitness app for longer than one month. Thus their feedback are very credible.

For people who have not used any fitness app, we asked them about their ideal app. Most of them prefer a simple app with basic functions like recording information. If possible, focus more on how to encourage users to do exercise rather than provide professional knowledge. Some of them said that they are just lazy to do exercise so if the app would encourage them to move, there should something worthy.

For people who have used fitness app, many testers think they are convenience because no need to find a coach to teach you how to do exercise. Some people also mention the remind function, this is also a good motivation for people. However, they think the biggest problem of existing apps are lacking of motivation, only provide professional knowledge to users and tell them what exercise should they do. These kind of apps may be suitable for people who are willing to do exercise consciously, but for people who are lazy, it does not works. Therefore, this is the direction that we need to focus on and improve.

Which pet do users like?

As our concept is combining a pet game with normal fitness applications, we want to use pet to attract people to keep exercise, it is important to know which kind of pet do people like and whether these pets can encourage people to keep exercise. Thus, during the last round of user testing, we asked our target users five questions about pets. These questions are:

  1. What is your gender?
  2. Do you have a pet in real world? If have, what pets?
  3. Which style of virtual pet do you want to have?
  4. Do you prefer to have an existing animal as a pet or an imaginary one?
  5. If you prefer to have a existing animal as a pet, which one do you want to have?

The first question was set up to know whether there is a big difference between male and female users’ choice. If necessary, we would consider making various modes for different genders. The third to fifth questions were set up to know which kind of animal do people like, these questions concerned animal species and aesthetics styles.

In this round of testing, there were 16 users participated in our user test, and 7 people are female, 9 people are male. The test results are shown below:

From the general angle, most people (56.3%) do not have a pet, 62.5% of people like cute and cool animals, but the people who like curious and stupid animals also occupied 37.6%. The number of people who like existing animals and imaginary pets are very similar (46.2% and 53.8%), people’s favorite animals are cat and dog, the people who like these two animals occupied 37.5%, other people’s favorite animals are very different, means everyone has their own choice about favorite animal.

However, when we were analyzing every individual response, we found there are some obvious differences between male and female user’s choice. For female users, cute animals are most popular, but the people who like it only occupied 42.85%, the people who like stupid and curious animals occupied 57.15%, none of female users like cool animals. About aesthetics styles, most of female users (72%) like existing animals

For male users, cute and cool animals are the most popular, 78% of male users like there two kinds of animals, and 66.6% male users like imaginary pets.

About favorite animal species, there is not an obvious difference between male and female users, their favorite animals are dog and cat, it is also the same with the general statistic result.

Conclusion

From the online surveys result, we got a more complete understanding of users' requirements. People think the most important factors of making people insist on exercising are motivation(such as loose weight) and making friends, motivations give them targets to do exercise and friends would be the people who can "supervise" and encourage them. Thus, we plan to keep the functions of ranking and adding friends on the prototype. Except this, we found that for both male and female users, their favorite pets both are cats and dogs, so we will use these two animals to be the pets in our prototype.

Phase 2

Stan-up 2:

At the start our project, we were suggested to use Arduino to finish a physical interaction system for our prototype, the potential functions of this part include:

  • Blinking bulbs which can inform users the state of the pet
  • Playing pet's voice
  • A vibration sensor which can detect the exercise status of users

But after we learnt how to use Arduino, we found we will need to use jumplines to connect every compinent of Arduino, and if we want to detect user's motions through using vibration sensor, the user will need to hold on the entire Arduino board to do exercise, we think it might affect user's experience. Thus, we asked suggestions from the lecturer, the lecturer expressed that actually it is not necessary for us to use Arduino, at this stage of our project, make our pet more attractive for users should be the prior task.

To do after stand-up 2:

  • Poster and additional promotional material - Ye
  • More attractive pets images and images for high fidelity prototype - Ye
  • High fidelity prototype - Yuchen
  • Github management - Ruoran
  • User test and evaluation - Fan & Yuchen
  • Summary - Fan
  • User scenarios & workflow - Ye
  • Video - Fan & Yuchen

Testing plan

Application name: SportsLife

Feature team name: Hello bag

Location of testing: UQ campus

Number of participants: 5

Background

The SportsLife is a mobile application that can motivate people to continue with their own workout plan regularly through four basic functions. These functions include raising virtual animals which was keep life through user doing workout, workout planner, workout result sharing and ranking, they are designed based on the background information we have gathered, and the theories of behaviour change.

Purpose

Through the testing, that was aim to 1.Determine if the application we made for the items is immediately recognisable to players, without explanation. 2.Improve the existing functions. 3.Any other functions need to add in application? 4.Is the design style for the application was acceptable? 5.Which part of the application was the most excellent?

Form of the Prototype

For testing the function use and UI design style. The current Low-Fidelity prototype was used to doing the user testing.

Participants was asked to use the prototype to do the test.

Testing Approach

  • Through the testing I want to determine if the application we made for the items is immediately recognisable to players, without explanation.
  1. Explain the background of the application for tester, but not explain the functions
  2. Show the prototype to tester
  3. Leading tester using the application step by step as appropriate.
  4. Ask tester's understanding of the application.
  5. Interview tester any part of the application should improve.
  6. Thanks for tester.
  • Through the testing I want to do the testing about the function use and the UI design of the application to improve.
  1. Explain the background of the application for tester.
  2. Show the prototype to tester
  3. Describe how to use each function and each function used for.
  4. Leading tester using the application step by step.
  5. Ask tester's opinion of the application functions use.
  6. Ask tester's opinion of the application UI design.
  7. Interview tester any part of the application should improve.
  8. Thanks for tester.

Evaluation Analysis

Through the testing, there are feedback we acquired from testers

According to our observation, testers can easy to understand the main function that we have, which is keeping virtual pets by keeping doing exercise. However, there are no pet information and state in the pet page, there is only a progress bar to show users about the progress of their task for that day. Users cannot get more information about the pet like the level of the pet, how hungry or thirsty the pet is. To make the main function of our app more interesting, we may provide various pets for users so that people of different genders and ages have better choice.

In addition, considering that people may feel confuse about how to gain food or water through doing sports. The market of the app is provided. It also comes with gold coins as the virtual currency for the app. People can earn gold coins by doing sports and use them to buy things to keep their virtual pets when they want. Meanwhile, we consider about to give users a few virtual coins trough daily check. They will get incremental gold coins by checking in daily without interruption. And we set a daily check-in period of 7 days that means incremental trend will only last for 7 days. For the eighth day they insist, it turns to next period. By this way, people are encouraged to exercise every day and they can do a simple plan for the next 7 days.

To make pets are more interactive, we are considering about some sentence what pets say to users. For example, when pets are hungry, users will see “Master, I am hungry… ” . And when pets are in a good state, tell some encouraging words to motivate users. Through text interaction, guide users to the feelings of virtual pets and let them have a sense of achievement by keeping pets.

Through the survey, we learned that our ranking is not particularly clear. Some testers mentioned that they are confused about the basis of the ranking. This part should be improved and we will make the ranking list clearer and more specific.

It's worth mentioning that our user interface is good. It has a clear layout with bright color so that people can use it easily.

Style Guide

A style guide is a set of standards for the design of the SportsLife application, either for general use or for specifically with the application. A brand style guide takes the heart and soul of SportsLife and translates it into design.

Color Palette

  • Color #1: #935daa
  • Color #2: #f3b442
  • Color #3: #4132bc
  • Color #4: #583576
  • Color #5: #6aabbf

Font Family

  • Font Family Headers: Arial; Bold
  • Font Family Body: Arial; Regular

Iconography

Phase 3

Low fidelity prototype

Through group discussion and continuous improvement, we have produced the final low fidelity prototype by using marvel, and the general process of low fidelity prototype improvement can be seen in Low fidelity prototype.

User Evaluation

Photo of testing

Observation

After connecting a series of devices, the tester donned shoes that were attached to a tin foil ring. Then he click the “start” button on the app and started jogging. As the adhesive of the tape is not good enough and the tin foil cannot stick well on the floor, the tester cannot make large movements, but this does not affect the test results. As the test subjects ran, the exercise value of users on the app continued to increase. After a while, the motion is full, and a prompt for today's task pops up on the app. Meanwhile, gold, as a reward for completing the task, is distributed to the player's account. After that, the tester use these gold to buy stuffs that the pet need.

Participant's background

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Work: High school student

Whether like pets: Yes

Whether like sports: No

Interview questions

  1. During the process of interaction, is there any place made you feel confused and do not know what to do next?
  • I don't understand when these items should be used.
  1. Do you think the pet could attract you and make you insist of exercising?
  • I think the pets are cute, the pet I chose was a cat, it has many different status, and I also can do many interactions with it. But I think if it can move (looks more live and natural) and has voice, it will be more attractive.
  1. Do you have any other suggestions?
  • I would like to have more variety of exercises instead of just running and walking.

New refine requirements

  1. Pictures of animals in different states can be improved to make it more vivid, interactive, and even consider using animation and adding voice.
  2. Clearer user guidance.

Photo of the app

First encounter scenario

Emma is a first-year student in the Master of Applied Econometrics program at the university of Queensland. She just travels to and from school by bus every day and lacks much exercise. Actually, she wants to do more exercise because she knows the importance of sports, but she lacks the motivation. She downloaded many fitness apps before, but she did not stick to it because of the boring and unchanging information. One day, Emma saw the SportsLife application advertisement while she was waiting for the bus. She downloaded the app after she saw the cute animals and the introduction of interactive work out way. She was so surprised about this app, because it provides a new style of pedometer that feeds a digital pet with every minute. Emma began by choosing her own pet first, after she selected a cute cat as her digital pet, she just walked several steps, the pedometer recorded every step and the time she exercised was converted into “money” which can buy food or something for their pet. By sharing the per level with her friends, she feels she is so interested in exercisng, and take his virtual pet everywhere she goes.

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