Cofit
”How might we motivate and persuade people to start workout and stay with it?”
Persuasive design to help people keep on track with their workout plan
Cofit
INTRODUCTION
We often envy those people who have a perfect body shape and think that I wanted to be like them someday. Then we start doing workout and even make a plan. However, how many of us stick with the plan and successfully build our ideal body shape eventually?
Therefore, the purpose of this project is to design a product that can motivate and persuade individuals to form workout habits. I initiated this project to explore and understand factors that may persuade people to do workout consistently.
ROLE
Product Designer
DURATION
7 Weeks
PROCESS OVERVIEW
This project is Theory Driven. I adopted methods proposed by BJ Fogg, a giant of persuasive design and the author of Tiny Habit. As illustrated below, I explore solutions that may motivate people to form a workout habit. These solutions were then incorporated in my design.
or scroll down to take a look the process
APPLYING BJ FOGG’S THEORY
Influence Analysis
Purpose - Map out appropriate methods that could persuade people to achieve different targeted changes.
Following the desktop research and 5 interviews with people who failed to continue workouts, I use BJ Fogg’s Influence Analysis to list out what’s preventing people from doing workouts and map out methods that could persuade people to achieve targeted changes.
Methods:
Reduction - Using computing technology to reduce complex behavior to simpler tasks increases the benefit ratio of the behavior and influences users to perform the behavior.
Tunneling - Using computing technology to guide users through a process or experience provides opportunities to persuade along the way.
Tailoring - Information provided by computing technology will be more persuasive if it is tailored to the individual’s needs, interests, personality, usage context, or other factors relevant to the individual.
Suggestion - A computing technology will have a greater persuasive power if it offers suggestions at opportune moments.
Self-monitoring - Applying computing technology to eliminate the tedium of tracking performance or status helps people to achieve predetermined goals or outcomes.
Surveillance - Applying computing technology to observe a person’s behavior increases the likelihood of achieving a desired outcome.
Conditioning - Computing technology can use positive reinforcement to shape complex behaviors or transform existing behaviors into habits.
B=MAP
Purpose - Identify prompts that increase motivation or ability to do workouts.
BMAP - Spark (low M, high A)
Focusing on finding opportunities to improve motivation, I developed three corresponding solutions as sparks to help motivate :
- Use reward/ punishment system to motivate people (Sensation)
- Enhance users’ social connection with other people (Belonging)
- Visualize efforts to record process (Anticipation)
Outcome/ Changes Design Matrix
Purpose - Evaluate user’s process of comply change, behavior change and attitude change.
Design Opportunities
DESIGN
Hi-Fi Prototype
I applied the results generated with BJ Fogg’s theory on my design.
Co-Workout
Community
Progress Data Visualization
Reward/ punishment system
Usability & Concept Test
The main purpose of this test is to verify whether the app successfully helps increase workout motivation. I conducted a usability & concept test with 10 target audiences.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED
After doing the usability & concept test, I realized the challenging problem with the co-workout concept is “how to make people feel it is OK to meet new friends on a workout app“. Currently, users would only find existing friends to be their partners.
In conclusion, the usability & concept test proved that the design opportunities generated with BJ Fogg’s theory can have some impact on providing users with motivation.