Fiit Challenges
Boosting engagement on the Fiit platform with the fitness challenges feature.
When
2018-2019
Results
70% of users started feature after launch
40 extra workout min per week for users on challenge
83% of users said they enjoyed the challenges 6 months later
Team
Product manager
Product designer (me)
Engineers (iOS, Android, JS)
Marketing managers
“Fiit feels like the home workout app to beat”
— Wired UK (Jan 2021)
Objective
Working closely with the marketing team, we tested various ways to engage Fiit users across social channels. Community fitness challenges were received well (e.g. complete 30 classes in 30 days).
The feedback we were getting indicated that users wanted to see their progress on challenges in the app. From the business perspective, it was also a good potential lever to promote specific classes or app content. I set out to define the concept, test ideas and deliver the feature end-to-end.
2. User research
I put together a user panel consisting of 30+ active Fiit users and presented 4 challenge concepts for them to review and feed back on.
What users said…
“Like the variety and focus that the different challenges provide.
...you try classes you otherwise wouldn't have chosen.”
— Claire, Fiit user
“Quite personal so makes it more realistic and … feels achievable in smaller chunks”
— Sarah, Fiit user
2. Wireframing
I did 2 rounds of wireframing and prototyping to define initial requirements, establish key user journeys, and involve developers early.
4. User testing
I then built a high fidelity prototype (in Marvel) to validate the feature with the users. (2024 update: Marvel account no longer available, now I use Figma).
Key finding: creating mini-challenges within a bigger challenge was too complicated for users to follow. It was also tricky for engineers to build/ We decided to keep things simple for MVP and show a single challenge goal that we would curate every month, promoting different class / goal types.
6. UI Design
I experimented with various ways to display users’ progress on the challenge while keeping it consistent with the rest of the app and at the same time supporting marketing campaigns.
My goal was to balance out reusing existing components, evolving the design system, and delivering within MVP timelines. The progress module was a new component added to the top of the home tab, which drove users on a challenge to complete more classes.
I created the final UI and specs for the entire user journey: from sign up and progression to challenge completion. Then I worked with iOS (and later Android) engineers to implement and help QA the feature.
7. Design system components
As a result of this work I created several new components and improved existing ones to make them more flexible in the future - feeding into our design system (in Sketch at the time, later we moved the whole system into Figma).
8. Results
70%
of users started a challenge after launch
40 min
The amount of extra workout min users on a challenge did weekly compared to those not on a challenge
83%
of users surveyed post launch said they’d enjoyed the feature
“FIIT has been the one thing to keep me sane in mind and body over the last eighteen months - and longer. I love how FIIT listens to its community and is constantly evolving so I’m very grateful for all that you and the team do for us”
— Fiit user, via customer support
Fiit Challengers group
One of the ways we gathered feedback and built engagement was through the Facebook group. It gave users a platform to start their own challenges, seek advice from peers and create their own training groups.