This is a password protected project 🔐
This is a password protected project 🔐
This is a password protected project 🔐
This is a password protected project 🔐
Momento
Envision running fun and collaborative
Designing a running app that builds connection and friendship between users in a virtual running community
and promotes the idea to run together virtually.
Duration: 3 weeks
Client: Momento
Team: Celine Wang, Andy Liu ( designers);
Eli Blackman (PM); Erika Tharp, Matt Straathof (developers)
Getting
Started
What motivates you to run?
While long-term running is very hard for average runners, we believe running together can overcome this difficulty. Make a running commitment to someone can lead us go out onto the road rather than stay in. Running pals would motivate us to keep going and support us through gradual progress. Momento deeply believes in this and decides to build a virtual community that makes running fun and collaborative.
Problems encountered during internal testing on TestFlight
This project happened two months after I got onboard @ Momento, at the time we were internally testing the app with a team of 12 people. While we had a feature called "propose goals to friends" that fully dedicated to increase engagement between runners, we found out that this feature was not well used, and almost all of testers (Momento employees) ended up with running alone, which makes the experience no different from Momento's competitors.
Thus, Andy Liu (my boss @ Futureform Lab) and I were charged to make the running experience on the app more “engaging” and “collaborative.”
My Role
In 3 weeks, Andy and I approached the problem with different models. We worked together and helped to review each other's work frequently. My major contributions:
1. Conducted initial user research and synthesized research insights.
2. Analyzed the problems with the current "running together" model, and designed a new model to make Momento stand out from its competitors.
3. In charge of almost all high fidelity design and the project's visual assets. Fully in charge of hand off process with developers.
4. Conducted user research content for the upcoming Beta Testing on March 25 with 300+ participants.
Problem
Statement
How might we improve the running experience more engaging and collaborative on a virtual platform?
/What's wrong with current model of proposing and accepting running goals to/from friends?
Proposals were easily turned down by friends
“I sent a run 10 miles next week proposal to Daniela last night, but she turned it down because she’s busy at work next week.”
Friends did't know your limits and aimed too big for you
“Eddie proposed a 5-mile goal to me, but I didn't to complete it. Feel like I failed him.”
Completing the run like a "task" given by others
“I still need to run by myself and I don't feel satisfied by completing the run.”
Research
Competitive Analysis
Strava
Strava is one of the most popular apps for runners and cyclists in North America. It tracks and analyzes your activities. When you record an activity, it automatically goes to your feed, where your friends and followers can share their own races and workouts.
Strengths
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Very professional experience for athletes and marathon runners.
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Thousands of organizations organize activities through Strava.
Weakness
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Information overwhelming: new users feel challenged to use the app.
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Lack of gamification system and too professional for casual runners.
Nike Run Club
Nike Run Club is a running app under Nike dedicated for runners who want guidance, inspiration and innovation. It provides different guided runs, such as hot run and 10K Head Starts, to help users to explore running types that fit their bodies.
Strengths
-
Strong gamification system to encourage runners to achieve more.
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Solely focuses on running experience and provides guided run.
Weakness
-
Lack of interactions with other runners or friends in real life.
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Tracking but not planning: one cannot schedule a run on the app.
Interview with Running Expert
Andy & I arranged an interview with Coach Nikki Rafie, the global director of workplace strategies @ Nike. We hoped to learn the running patterns and behaviors of inexperienced runners.
Coach Nikki told us inexperienced runners perform much better when they receive external motivations from others. Those runners: 1. always want someone to be accountable to around them 2. would be more active if they follow others. The best way for them to enjoy running is to reconstruct the off-line running club experience.
Define
Two types of target users
New runners seeking for support from others
Casual runners seeking for bonding activities
Pain points for non-professional runners
Easily Aim Too High
New users tend to create big running goals for themselves, while not capable to achieve the goals.
Design Solution
Provide users ways to break down big goals into bite-size goals.
Lack of Self Motivation
Even with well-designed gamification system, new runners constantly feel lack of internal motivations.
Design Solution
A better system to motivate runners with support from friends and community.
Complain about "Unreal" Interaction
Users who seek for off-line running club experience feel most running apps only focus on solo runners.
Design Solution
A collaborative and relaxing platform for friends to bond and create memories through running activities.
New Proposal
I proposed to replace goal proposal to friends with a more collaborative feature called Challenge.
The running challenge is like a collaboration game that users and their friends are asked to contribute into a single goal. Most importantly, it bonds people together in
the virtual running community. Challenge is good because:
1. It performs like a bonding activity.
2. Deeper involvement: users are curious about other participant's performance.
3. Make progress together: users can grow with their friends.
Ideation
I presented 3 different approaches for challenges, and the team decided to go with the "Relay Race" model.
1.
Leaderboard
Top runners of the challenge appear on leaderboard.
2.
Run at Same Time
Run at the same time. If one fails, all runners fail.
3.
Relay Race
Members take turns to contribute to the challenge.
1st Approach: Leaderboard
Pros
This pattern honors top contributors of the week and of the whole challenge. Users are able to see most up-to-date ranking and recent activities.
Concerns
The concept of competition seems contrasting to our foundation of "bonding." Leaderboard is just another form of running alone.
2nd Approach: Run at the Same Time
Flora
Forest
Inspired by some popular productivity apps, I wondered if we can borrow this model of "doing something together in real time" as a way to make the running together experience more tangible and physical. In this model, I envisioned users will start to run and end the run at the same time with participant from the same challenge. The challenge is only finished when everyone finish running at the same time.
Pros
This model emphasizes running with friends in the real time. It makes the virtual running together more tangible and physical.
Concerns
Scalability is a big issue here: how to make 100 people run at the same time? The meeting with dev team also made us realized the technical constraints out there for implementing this model.
Final Approach: Adopting Relay Race Mode
A phenomenon states that less-capable individuals will perform better when doing a
task in a group setting, rather than on their own.
In a relay race, runners need to shift from thinking as a collection of individuals competing each other to a collaborative team with purpose to achieve the same goal. According to the Köhler effect, this mindset of collaboration make people work harder when they work alone.
How does it work?
If two friends set up a challenge of running 20 miles in a week, instead of run 10 miles for each person, they can run collaboratively: e.g. one runs 6 miles and the other 14 miles. As long as they are able to reach the goal as a team, the challenge is successfully conquered.
Opportunities
This model values both self contribution and group achievement. The more the user contributes to the challenge, more likely the team is able to conquer it.
Design
Solution
Main CTA
The navigation bar contains the universal cta to create challenges, log activities and create new posts.
Create Challenge
You can easily create running challenges, and invite as many friends to join as you want to.
Log Activity
Besides auto logging of activities from Fitbit, you can also manually log activities with description and photos.
Post & Reaction
Activities will be automatically shared on feed, where your friends can react & comment to it, and access your challenge.
Check Progress
You can always check the status of the challenge by accessing the detail page. You would receive confetti once it's completed.
What's
Next
Released on App Store & Beta Testing
Collaborated with AMWA (American Medical Writers Association), the app will be tested with over 300 runners at AMWA's March conference. After collecting feedback from the users, we will soon proceed to Milestone 2 and 3.
FEEDBACK GATHERING (survey + interview)
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General feedback
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potential features
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Feature requests
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Feedback on collaborative challenge
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Feedback on visual design and branding
Data Tracking
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Frequency of key CTA: create challenge, create post, log activity
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How frequent would user create challenges and the size of challenges they created
Takeaways
Speak in Developer's Language
Right after I joined the team, I encountered some difficulties to communicate with developers during the hand-off process. Worked everyday with developers, I realized how inefficient it could be if I don't find a good way to cooperate.
🔴 Inefficient support
🔴 Messy handoff & extra workload for me
Design Workshop for Developers
Some developers were new to Figma and didn't know how to check spec and export assets properly, so I held a workshop to walk through some key features on Figma.
Sync Efficiently
After a month of exploration, I ended up with a combination of few approaches:
1. created a hand-off page on Figma and formatted all hand-off designs. 2. Cut design tickets directly on Github like what developers do. 3. Took walkthrough videos on Loom before hand-off. 4. Offered daily open call to discuss specific design issues.
