Junto App Design

Amelia Zhang
Sep 3, 2018 · 7 min read

Team

UI: Jane Arnett & Arjun Kalburgi

UX: Lucy Necrasova & Amelia Zhang

Illustration+slidedeck design: Amelia Zhang

Client Brief

Create an app that is an easy to use location-based matchmaker, connecting yoga teachers with these empty spaces. Much like Airbnb or Uber, yoga teachers and spaces will be reviewed and ranked allowing for better quality in both. Specifically the client would like validation on the business idea through market and user research.

Research Overview

Our client brief was in its initial stage and needed in depth research to validate her business idea. We decided to start with a wide scope to familiarize ourselves with the yoga industry in general, then delve deeper into interviewing our three main stake holders: yoga teachers, yoga students, and studio spaces. It was important for us to start with a wide scope in order to examine our assumptions on which the viability of the app resided on.

Yoga Industry General Research Insights

It was important for us to familiarize ourselves with the yoga industry in order to create more relevant interview scripts for our stakeholders. We conducted preliminary research through reading through online yoga journals targeted towards teachers and studio owners as well as online forums where many of these stakeholders traded business tips and industry stories. We were able to quickly distill some key pain points to focus our user interview questions around. For both yoga instructors and independent studios, financial stability is a struggle. Yoga instructors face fierce competition entering into the field due to an over saturation of yoga teachers. This is because studios are most profitable when they run retreats and yoga teacher training classes. The 200+ hour entry yoga teacher certificate is a comparatively low investment to other career specializations. Burn out is a common yoga teacher phenomena due to financial instability, lack of benefits and high emotional investment. Yoga teachers operate on a freelance model, with teachers often holding classes at multiple studios. Yoga compensation is a mixture of set hourly wages and commission.

Yoga Teacher Research Insights

Main Pain points for Yoga Teachers

Through conducting user interviews with yoga teachers we were able to narrow our target user to entry level yoga teachers. Through our interviews with established(5+years teaching experience)teachers, they expressed having a strong student base and studio ties that they no longer need to seek new employment opportunities for themselves and thus would not be interested in using Junto. Our main target user would be an entry level yoga teacher.

One of the key points to validate was whether yoga teachers currently rented studios to host their own classes. Through our survey, across the board whether entry level or senior yoga teacher all of them have rented out studios to host their own classes. It is quite common for yoga teachers to operate in an entrepreneurial mindset due to its freelancing nature.

Yoga Teacher data on Space Rental

What stood out in our research is that many teachers have also rented from alternative spaces such as empty Church rooms, Condo common rooms, corporate meeting rooms…etc. to even the more unconventional of hosting yoga in partnership with cafes or even on surf boards! This proved to be a key insight as part of the pain point of teachers renting out studios is that studios keep the best times for themselves and as an entry level yoga teacher hosting their own class it makes it even more difficult to convince students to attend your class when its hosted not during the prime times of 6p.m.-9p.m. weekdays and weekends. Thus to open the yoga space booking to alternative spaces proved a way to circumvent the problem.

Yoga Teacher data on Class Advertising

Teachers also expressed class advertising as a major pain point. Teachers report that it is difficult to find an effective advertising channel and find current methods as unsatisfactory. Their current solution is to operate the class at a loss for the beginning or at a small class size and eventually the class grows organically through referrals.

Through our user interviews we have summarized the following information as our archetypical target yoga teacher:

As an entry level Yoga teacher, Sasha is motivated to gain experience in order to break into the yoga industry. She currently has no loyal student body yet and has little financial stability from freelancing at a few yoga studios. She is interested in renting her own studios to generate more income.

Studio Owner Research Insights

Another key point to validate the viability of the business is whether studios rented out to teachers. Surveying the independent studios in Toronto, nearly 90% studios have on their website options to rent out their studios to teachers. This point was further confirmed in the interviews with teachers and studio owners. In our interview we also asked what studios cared most for determining renting out to the teachers, overwhelmingly it was trustworthiness. It was also important to gage the interest of alternative venue spaces, the precedence of 70% of yoga teachers having rented from an ‘alternative space’ helped the proof of concept, furthermore businesses such as Airbnb and Breather validate in terms of the sharing economy. Alternative spaces did express an interest in extra cash flow however was concerned with liability of yoga damaging their spaces or how much extra time and effort they had to put in place to participate in leasing their space.

We summarized our qualitative research into the persona Erik:

Yoga Student Research Insights

Through our interviews with yoga students we were able to focus in on the target user of the Junto app. Yoga teachers who would be renting spaces to host their own classes would fall on the less inexpensive spectrum. Thus Junto would target the same category as current discounted yoga prices like Groupon or Class pass. With Junto being the only one operating at that price point with the capacity to offer repeat classes. This target market makes sense for the saturation of the competitive landscape.

Junto Student Market

We conducted user interviews with various yoga students to summarize our qualitative research into Jordan our archetypical user. Jordan is a young freelance designer motivated to improve her fitness. She is drawn to convenience and deals, she has used Class pass and Groupon. As a digital native, she is open to adopting new apps for receiving added value and convenience. Although a fan of yoga, she is frustrated that she needs to pay 20+ for drop in yoga classes in Toronto. Being a bargain hunter, she has already exhausted her Groupon options for yoga studios located near her house. The $15–20 average price of class pass is still too expensive for her, though she does like the flexibility class pass offers with visiting multiple studios.

Overwhelming students identify location as the most important aspect of determining the class

It was important for us to understand whether students felt a loyalty towards the studio or instructor. Whether there would be an interest in following a teacher to attend their class. However through our interviews with both students and teachers, they identified it as arbitrary.

Factors such as location and price were much more important in determining the attendance of a class. One studio owner mentioned especially that they find low loyalty amongst students especially with the proliferation of Groupon and Class pass, where price and convenience trumps everything. Thus in our design of the app we wanted to focus our key value propositions as convenience of location and price.

Objectives

Through our research we derived the core functionality of Junto:

Junto serves as a hub to connect teachers, venue owners and students. For the scope of the first phase, we will be focusing on building the app through solving the Teacher’s pain point. We decided to focus on two functionalities: the booking a venue as well as risk management for freelance teachers.

V1 Left vs. V2 Right: Filter/Sorting Pattern Design
V1 Left vs. V2 Right: Booking Interaction Design

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