Nelson Fitness Center Treadmill Critique
Over the summer, the Brown University Nelson Fitness Center replaced the treadmills with completely new ones. Even though a treadmill might seem like a simple interface to design, there are smaller elements that could truly affect the entire user experience. In this article, I’ll be discussing about some of the benefits and downfalls of the new Nelson Fitness Center treadmills, some constraints that may have been present during the design, and suggesting a couple changes that would improve the user interface.
First, there are obvious benefits to this treadmill’s design. The optionality of incline % and speed, both on the screen and in button form closer to you, provides personalization to your workout routine. These functions are learnable too; the symbols — a runner up a hill, and a runner sprinting with trail wind — quickly aid the user in its functionality. It seems intuitive, but a treadmill designed without these options would not fare well. The aspect I would like to highlight here is that not only are there two places where you could adjust either of these aspects, but also, that the easy access placement of the handles, shown by the yellow circles in Figure 1, provide a memorable process, contributing to the overall usability. The previous treadmill in the Nelson required you to reach all the way onto the board to adjust incline or speed, which is a hassle when you are breathing heavily.
Another positive feature is the treadmill’s information bar shown in Figure 1 that is highlighted by the red rectangle. This bar gives you the option to display four statistics in loose categories: incline, distance, speed, calories. This bar provides useful information that if not there, the user would probably use an external device to discover. For example, someone trying to lose weight would want to know how many calories they burned; this design choice creates efficiencies that allow the user to quickly access the information and settings they desire. Because there is only one button to switch for each category, usability efficiency is at its peak. A user can quickly get to their preferred settings.
There are three downfalls I identified from using this treadmill. The first is that the location of the EMERGENCY STOP button is not too easy to reach. Located behind a bar, the emergency button reflects poor efficiency characteristics. It’ll not only take longer/be more difficult to reach it, but it’s simply dangerous. Second, for those who prefer to watch TV while they run, the ledge indicated by the blue rectangle is not ideal and does not hold a phone up. I notice that many long distance runners enjoy listening to TV shows or movies in addition to music during their runs. Personally, I swap between long distance running where I watch TV and short distances where I do high intensity intervals (switching between jogging and sprinting). Thus, this small detail certainly inconveniences runners’ preferences and tarnishes willingness to use the machine.
The third downfall is definitely a more personal one, but I think it relevant because of its importance within the fitness community. As stated before, I often do high intensity intervals, where I switch between jogging and sprinting about every minute and a half. This type of training is highly popular for quite a long time within the fitness community, and I do not believe it to be a fad. Because this type of running requires quick switches between speeds, the up and down buttons for speed are simply too slow for this purpose. Because it takes longer to switch speeds, it often brings my total workout time about 10–15 min longer than it should. The efficiency in this respect is not available for those who wish to participate in interval training; I cannot complete my task as quickly as I would prefer. Implementation cost (money and time) may have been a constraint here; the option of presetting two preferred speeds could be expensive and more complicated. I realize that this downfall may be particular to me; however, I would be interested to see just how ubiquitous this issue is to gauge the extent of its impact on user experience.
My design suggestions, shown in Figure 2, reflect the three problems that were discussed in this article. First, there would be an emergency stop button at the easiest physical convenience to the runner; a more efficient and intuitive placement, being right at the front of the display. Second a more phone-friendly ledge would provide more convenience for runners who enjoy TV. Third, interval training-runners (or even non interval runners) will find this useful, as a more efficient way to switch speeds; the user may slide the speed bubble up and down as he or she pleases. For safety reasons I would make the speed bubble flash “OK?” to press once more to confirm speed.