february 2022 - june 2023
150Minuten
enabling adults aged 50+ to establish a healthy and sustainable fitness routine
health & fitness
background
the company.
At 150Minutes, the mission was to help adults aged 50+ to establish a healthy, fun and sustainable fitness routine to help avoid those many physical and mental health issues which are caused or worsened by a lack of physical activity.
I met the founders early on and continued to work with them for a 1.5 years throughout the early-stage phase.
the user problem.
We found that for this user group, there are lots of barriers to going to the gym. Not only did the Covid epidemic decrease the willingness to spend time in public spaces, but the feeling of not belonging to a gym full of athletic students in their mid-twenties kept many of our users from going. Classes are also perceived as too hard, and exercises are often not customised for the older audience who might have experienced injuries and/or surgery.
my role.
I started out as the startups one-woman-design team and went on to lead a small team of three designers. I took on the task to build the company’s first design system in Figma.
major insights.
One of our major insights during UX research was that adults between 50 and 80 years show a large bandwidth of technological affinity and accessibility needs. While some adults in this age span keep up to date and know a lot about the use of technical devices, these tasks represent a huge challenge for others. For our design, this meant that ideally, there would be different ways of displaying the same content, allowing users to choose from different accessibility degrees. Firstly, however, we needed to design in a way that those members with the highest accessibility needs would not encounter issues and would be able to complete central tasks without problem.
methods.
A/B Testing
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
User Personas
Data Analysis
Research Analysis
Sketching
Wireframing
Prototyping
User Testing with Prototypes
Design System in Figma
tools.
Figma
Miro
Notion
Useberry
Testingtime
Contentful
Zapier
Typeform
Airtable
Hotjar
defining the problem
market research.
During market research, we found that there was no dedicated fitness tool for 50+ on the German market. With the share of 50+ adults rising EU-wide, the obtainable market promised considerable growth.
The pandemic and other social-economic factors additionally spoke for a digital / at-home fitness solution for our target audience.
We discovered there was a need for a tailored solution tailored for the age group 50+, whose needs and pain points largely differ from those of younger individuals.
understanding the user
research strategy.
Of course, it was my job to understand the ins and outs of our target audience.
To plan communicate our research plan, I built a research strategy board that was used as point of reference for my colleagues.
This way, it was clear to see why we were doing which research and what was coming next.
user interviews and usability tests.
I conducted user interviews in several batches, always with a specific focus, such as the landing page or live-trainings.
I recruited participants using various methods such as flyers in Berlin with different incentivisation, emails to our existing customers and the tool TestingTime. I conducted the interviews partly live in our Berlin office, partly remote. Mobile usability interview were best conducted live, since screensharing over Zoom on a mobile device wasn’t easy enough for our audience.
I created the interview plans, consent forms and data privacy forms, interview scripts, conducted the interviews and analysed the outcomes. The product team was at my side, giving feedback and taking notes during interviews.
During and after the talks, I collected all insights and quotes in Notion and tagged and sorted them to create affinity clusters. After this, I could crystallise product impacts that our research implied, and decide on their urgency and severity and feasibility together with the product team.
In order to better visualise the insight clusters and product impacts for the rest of the team, I made it a habit to bring the most important insights into a screenshot flow in Miro to create mind maps for each interview batch.
personas.
After a certain amount of research, we understood our users’ struggles and motivations quite well. I was able to portray two distinct personas, who faced different challenges. Amongst other things, we found that for “Klaudia”, the current MVP worked better, while “Charlotte” didn’t receive the guidance and motivational assistance she needed.
user journey.
Through a user journey map, we could pinpoint at what point during the flow our “Charlotte”’s experienced frustrations, potentially causing her to drop out.
ideation
low-fidelity.
The first MVP we had was a Figma prototype built by an agency in early days.
Our research showed that the most urgent usability problems revolved around motivating our users and guiding them to specific trainings.
For many users, especially those who weren’t yet in the habit of exercising regularly, the decision which training to participate in was a significant barrier. So what we needed was personalised recommendations and a clear visual hierarchy with clear CTAs on first entry.
I went on to create sketches for each of the main pages to collect ideas.
mid- to high-fidelity.
I went on to show my ideas to some of our users and discuss different solutions with them. I also spoke to the product team regularly. I moved my ideation to Figma to create high-fidelity wireframes.
At this stage, our development team was an agency who worked in Bubble, an advanced no-code MVP tool. They implemented design changes and fixes and I was co-responsible for ensuring design and usability was implemented in Bubble as intended.
backend fun
building a recommendation engine.
A while later, after some dashboard updates, we were further searching for ways to recommend fitting trainings to our “Charlotte” persona, and I came up with the MVP for an onboarding questionnaire with a recommendation engine
We decided to offer a free fitness type test on our landing page. During this type test, we would find out which of the categories (strength, cardio, mobility, balance/coordination and relaxation) the individual user would benefit from most and approximately what fitness level they currently had. On the results page, users could see which fitness type they were, which specific trainings we recommended, and they also found a link to a free trial. As soon as they registered, we already had basic information we needed to provide personalised training recommendations.
revisiting the onboarding flow.
I sat down with our senior marketing manager and we discussed how we could integrate this new registration flow with the fitness type test into campaigns. We ideated on different flows.
After we decided on the most effective flow, we tested shorter and longer versions of the Typeform questionnaire and analysed incoming data.
The questionnaire showed a significant increase of sign-up and retention rates. It showed such an amount of success that the product team integrated it into our main acquisition channels.
design system
building a design system in figma.
Later down the line, we transitioned to Contentful as CMS. By this time, we had a small in-house dev team. Now it was my job to create pixel-perfect and consistent high-fidelity wireframes.
Our visual identity had changed since the beginning. For Contentful we worked in different screen resolutions and could design fully responsive. We were entering scaleable and more powerful solution. So I took a blank Figma file and started creating a new Design system.
today
the product.
The website and all landings have been coded and integrated with Contentful. The in-app experience is still hosted in Bubble, but the transition in going on.
Through design and product improvements, we managed to increase the sign-up rate to 85% (opportunities converting to leads). The most important UX improvements included better and more personalised training recommendations and better information architecture on the dashboard and schedule page.
Today, in June 2023, 150Minuten has over 102 paying subscribers, an average of 22 classes held per week, 5210 minutes trained in live classes per week and 5672 minutes of on-demand content viewed per week.
150Minuten continues to receive great amounts of positive feedback by customers.
takeaways.
During my work with 150Minutes, I got to wear many hats. I enjoyed working agile and staying close to our users.
At the very beginning, my work was very research-heavy. I learned a lot about a new demographic group that has completely different mental models and expectations towards a digital interface. I was reminded to create what feels good to the user, even if it feels clumsy or outdated to me at times.
I also learned that motivating members of this age group through a screen is a tricky task, since they are not necessarily used to a lot of screen time. Focussing on the human interaction, such as praise and jokes from the coaches and conversations with other members brought more success than elements of gamification in the interface.
In the last six months, building the design system was one of my major tasks. Creating a scaleable system with consistent designs and reliable guidelines which can grow alongside the design ecosystems and the product was exciting, brainy and fun. I just love great design systems, and they save considerable amounts of time and energy further down the line.
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