Project Overview
Introduce Gamifications on an online fitness program for older adults
COMPANY
Age Bold is a fitness tech startup which provides personalized online classes platform for older adults. They help people improve balance, strength, and mobility from the comfort of their own homes.
BUSINESS GOALS
Maintain active users and decrease drop rate during the 8-week program
Create excitement and incentive by building a shareable Badge system
Help users feel a sense of achievement, and motivate them to exceed their own fitness expectations
ROLE
Product Designer
User Research Interaction Design, Visual Design, Usability Testing, and Prototyping
TIMELINE
6 Weeks
The Problem
How might we motivate older adults to consistently join an online exercise program?
Currently, Age Bold offers a free 8-week trial, but users are not finishing the entire course. Using positive incentives such as badges or milestones could improve the rate of course-completion.
The Solution
Create excitement and incentive by implementing an educational and shareable Badge system
Badges are a method of gamification, and have a long history of usage across fitness apps, education apps, and video games. Gamification is a method to let users gain a sense of accomplishment and help them reach their goal.
Discovery & User Research
How older adults behave and what their fitness habits look like
With very minimal prior research done by the client, we planned and went to SF senior center on conducting exploratory research to understand seniors’ behavior and motivation.
We recruited six users who fit the target demographic which were 65 to 82 years old who have exercise hobbies .
COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
We also performed competitor/comparator analysis on a variety of digital fitness and learning products in order to gain a better understanding of the competitive landscape.
Analysis of Insights and Prioritization Issues
Getting to know how older adults think about technology, exercise and health and find the opportunities
SYNTHESIS AND ANALYSIS
After conducting user interviews, and analyzing the gathered data from research, our team was able to categorize the insights into these 3 areas where seniors caring about and how Age Bold should consider during design.
ACTIONABLE RESULTS
- Keeping the badges and gamification as simple and clear as possible will be key. It's important to enlarge fonts and buttons to ensure easier legibility and accessibility.
- Adding personalization, praises, encouragements, and allowing others from the Age Bold community to provide motivating gestures to each other can be effective. Example: badge for getting X amount of high five/claps, adding encouraging words with positive colors and sounds throughout the workout
- Having educational pop ups on how the program reduces physical pain and upkeeps mobility would be helpful in encouraging older adults to power on.
Gamification Ideate & Iterations
What gamification pattern might work on our target users?
Before starting ideate, we did more research about gamification patterns based on the insights we got from user interviews. We narrowed down to 7 patterns and started to iterate then we dot voted and presented the clients. After discussing, we agreed on focus on praise and self assessment completion for gamification due to time and technical constrains.
GAMIFICATION LO-FI IDEATION
GAMIFICATION MID-FI ITERATIONS- SELF ASSESSMENT PAGE
#3 was the final design that we decided to move forward, because the color tights with the brand color and dividing levels with line and less copy communicate the message more clear.
GAMIFICATION MID-FI ITERATIONS- PRAISE
#2 was the final design that we decided to move forward. We placed the personalize greeting and praise at the dashboard page to create a welcoming and motivative start point for users.
Badges Ideate & Iteration
What type of badges might motivate users to exceed their fitness goals?
Before we jumping into design, we worked with the clients to make a list of what badge we should have and why. We decided to have 3 categories for badges and it is streak, milestone, and mastery.
Streak- Motivate users to keep going and helping users build a habit
Milestone- Give users a sense of achievement, in term of small tasks
Mastery- Create a sense of completing a level and make users feel they are in control
BADGES LO-FI IDEATION
BADGE MI-FI ITERATIONS
We decided on iteration 1’s badge tile design which is simple but educational with the badge name and short description of what the badge is about. Users can have quick access to this page but view more information by clicking the tiles. We selected iteration 3’s since the second navigation bar has a more coherent design with other parts of the website and the category is organized and clear.
Final Screens
Feature 1- Personalize greeting and praise
This is the dashboard where the personal touch was placed with a greeting message and a conversational motivation quote. At this page, users can have a preview of the most recent badges they have gained and the access to badge gallery.
Feature 2- Badge gallery
A short, single-line secondary category navigation bar to keep the website looking sharp and easy to read.
Badge tiles include badge and badge name to ensure simplicity and readability.
Hover state affords users a visual stimulation that it is clickable.
Modal popup contains:
Larger view of the badge to give user a quick understanding by being exposed to a small cognitive effort and triggering a sense of pleasure.
Received date to help users keep track of their exercise habits
Share badge CTA to connect with users’ communities
Feature 3- Assessment bar
This is the page users will see after finish the self-assessment test. We used clear and encouraging UX copy to motivate them to exceed their fitness expectations and enhance the visual design.
Results
Findings from usability tests
We conducted usability tests with five users in San Francisco Ferry Building and below were what we found.
BADGE SYSTEM
1/5 user found that receiving a badge was a motivational catalyst for them to work out again.
4/5 users found that receiving a badge was superficial and not motivational
ASSESSMENT BAR
3/4 users found the assessment bar to be satisfactory and clear.
3/5 users found the assessment bar to be motivating and encouraging in continuing their fitness goals.
PRAISE COPY AND VISUAL
4/5 users appreciate the positive words of encouragement, however, having an option to turn them off would be a nice touch.
4/5 users thought the visuals were easy to understand
Opportunities we found
Welcome ”praise” could become redundant and repetitIve. Introducing the ability to turn it off could be beneficial.
Additional pops of color can be added in the UI interface to bring more life to the website
Having a personalized experience for people to focus on strengthening specific areas of their choice would drive more interest.
Most users did not find the badges to be motivating or beneficial. They can do without the badges.
Why this didn’t work out?
Human Environmental Interactions, such as personable instructors and community are more important than gamification for older adults
Our target demographic, older adults from 60-85, do not like working in their home. They prefer walking, for the purpose of being in touch with outdoors and the community.
They do not see badges as a token of motivation but rather a superficial reward, like "participation award"
Personalization is extremely important to older adults, whether its the ability to report pain, tweaking the class based on pain, or just feeling like they are heard
A personable instructor is one factory that is important to older adults. They are hoping for someone that is professional yet caring, to guide them through intimidating moves with the understanding of their recent pain or constraint.
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