Inspire Fitness App

Process

Problem Statement

How might we optimize the mobile app in order to increase user retention, both paid and active?

Hypothesis

The Inspire Fitness mobile app had a low retention rate and a high churn rate. Tech support received feedback from users who expressed many frustrations, from navigation to organization to content relevance. After gathering qualitative feedback from customer surveys, customer support, and app ratings, the hypothesis of the product team was the app lacked product/market fit, and the user interface was buggy and difficult to navigate.

The questions we posed to ourselves became:

• What is product/market fit for Inspire Fitness?

• How can we redesign the app so it is easy and intuitive for users to find relevant content?

User Research

Through user interviews, surveys, and analytics we were able to determine the most used features of the app. We spoke to users about their frustrations, as well as asked them to describe to us their goals for using the app. What we discovered was the majority of users were interested in the strength content so they could learn how to exercise with the strength equipment they purchased from Inspire Fitness. This was an area of the app lacking in both content and features; the design had been built mainly to support the live streaming of cardio workouts.

User Personas

Through the synthesis of our user research, we were able to determine two primary user personas. While we had a sizable group of self-identified female users interested in the cardio content, the majority of the user base was self-identified male and leveraging the strength content.

Solution

The product team decided the best course of action for the app to increase retention was to optimize the existing UI of the cardio section, and to conduct further research into additional features to tailor the user experience of the strength section. During our initial research, we were able to determine some ways to alter the strength section to make it more intuitive and usable until further research could be done to justify the addition of more robust features.

Handoff to UI

At the time of writing, the product and UX research conducted is the cornerstone for future feature development and the redesign of the user interface. This research also helped to inform the creation of a new UI style kit that is being implemented in the app’s redesign.

Research Strategy

To gather further qualitative and quantitative data from users on an ongoing basis, I created a Mixpanel analytics strategy as well as a Mopinion user survey strategy. Through their implementation, the product team hoped to gather more insights as the app underwent the redesign and to shine a light on any potential blind spots in our working knowledge base. I oversaw the development implementation of both strategies.