Improving cult.fit | Case Study
Cult.fit is a fitness and wellness platform that offers a variety of workout classes, including strength training, cardio, yoga, and meditation. Cult.fit has various fitness centres spread across cities.
I have been a member of cult.fit for weeks now. This case study is based on my personal experience and survey done on 20 people (friends and family) who work out regularly but not necessarily at cult.
Intro and pain points
Music can enhance the workout experience. For some people, it encourages them to push harder. Some say music sets a vibe for the gym.
Music at a gym is played, generally, by the choice of the gym owner or manager and is not personalized for you.
Sure, people can wear headphones but, in the survey, I found out, some people, especially beginners, tend to work out in groups or pairs and just don’t feel like wearing a headphone. Some people find wearing headphones uncomfortable, but they do because they think that music helps in their work out. Others, who don’t wear headphones, said that though they have music preferences while working out, it is not a big deal, and they can workout while listening to the music that is played at the gym.
But most people would prefer listening to the music of their choice while working out and *not* on headphones.
Proposed solution
As a solution, we can provide users an option to link their workout playlists to the cult.fit app, so that whenever they check-in at a fitness centre, music from their playlist is added to the play queue. One song is appended to the play queue from each user’s playlist.
PS: Since cult.fit doesn’t have a check-out mechanism. I assume the average time a user works out as 1.5 hours, post which the system would stop playing songs from their playlist.
I have tried my best here to adhere to cult’s design principles. The solution requires you to link your Spotify account and then select your workout playlist.
Once user connects their Spotify account, they can see all their playlists and select one to play workout music from.
Shortcomings
This study is based on the research done on fairly small number of people. The potential impact of this feature may not be huge, its rather an attempt to subtly improve the user experience.
Even though, as per Spotify’s API documentation, this design seems technically feasible/achievable, the cost implications have not been considered here.
Thanks for reading. Cheers!
