
Fitness app — VUX Design based on Alexa
Why the app is necessary?
Problem
Fitness guidance is necessary because it could enhance the training efficiency and maximize the training result. For the beginner, they might feel confused about how to start their training plan, and for the senior, they might seek some professional suggestions to level up their training quality. Therefore, the exclusive training guidance would be in great demand. Although most of the fitness clubs provide personal coach service, not everyone could afford it.
Assumption
Exclusive fitness guidance is in great demand but not everyone can afford it. Some people might consider using fitness apps instead, but they worry that they fail to provide exclusive mentoring and monitoring as a personal coach.
Idea and Solution
The fitness app using Alexa technique acts as a personal coach who provides exclusive training guidance. Users could interact with the app as they communicate or speak with a real personal coach.
App design planning
Based on the above problem and assumption, I will do the research and design accordingly. Firstly, I need to plan a design schedule and follow it step by step.

How to start the research?
I used Agile as my research methodology because it is iterative, incremental, and evolutionary during the whole process. Even late changes in requirements are welcomed.
I used surveys(30 feedbacks), one-to-one interviews(10 interviews), and usability test(WOZ experiment) during the prototyping phase as the research methods.


Data Analysis
Survey:
The interviewees of the survey are 50% male and 50% female. They are from different social groups including students, full-time or part-time employees, and retired people.

According to the survey data, almost all of the interviewees agree that personal coach works well, so fitness personal coach is in great demand.

But the interviewees also state that the high cost is the biggest problem when considering purchasing PT courses.

80% of the interviewees accept using a fitness app replacing personal coach but they also worry the app fails to give them exclusive training mentoring and instant feedback. In addition, over 70% of the interviewees are not familiar with the app with smart speakers, like Siri, Alexa, or Google assistant. Although some people have ever tried to use them, they have unsuccessful communication experience.


In addition, most of the interviewees think diet preference during the training period is important.

Interview:
The feedbacks of the interview are similar. I summarize the conclusion of the interview results as below.
- Fitness personal coach is in great demand and all the interviewees think the exclusive training guidance works efficiently
- Most the interviewees agree that personal coach cost much
- Over 50% of the interviewees accept that using fitness apps replacing personal coach because it will lower the cost, but they worry that the apps fail to provide exclusive mentoring and encouragement as a real personal coach.
- most of the interviewees are not familiar with virtual assistants, like Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri. Some of them have an unsuccessful communication experience when using virtual assistants.
Affinity Mapping:
Based on the result of the survey and one-to-one interview, I used an affinity map to edit the collected data. I categorize into three main columns: personal coach, fitness apps, and smart speaker.

Empathy Mapping:
I also summarized an empathy map as the basis of my following ideation.

Competitor analysis - Fitness app comparison:
I selected four fitness apps and analyzed their advantages and disadvantages.

— What could be learned?
multiple features: workout videos, exclusive training plan, real-time communication, progress tracking, nutrition suggestion, work out community
—What is the opportunity?
Fitness apps are based on on-screen interaction, although most apps provide exclusive training guidance, the communication between the clients and coaches relies on text. Therefore, it might act as a real training scene when the clients can chat with the app regarded as a virtual fitness coach.
How to develop insight?
Personas:
Based on the one-to-one interview, I selected three interviewees and analyzed their goals, behaviors, motivation, and demotivation.

Ideation:
Until now, we can conclude that personal coach training work well but it cost much. Although fitness apps can lower the cost, they fail to directly interact with the users. If there is an app that acts as a personal coach, users’ problems would be settled. Users could speak with the app directly and gain the exclusive training mentoring from it. For this, I tend to design a voice-based app using Alexa. But there is a new problem that few people have confidence in using smart speakers because they think the machine or device can’t understand what they are saying.
Therefore, based on the pain points collected from the survey and one-to-one interview, I sketch a user flow and sample dialogue and try to solve the user’s problems.
User Flow:
Then based on the previous survey, interview, competitor comparison, and personas, I sketched a user flow with features and functions in response to the user’s pain points and needs.
fitness app fails to provide exclusive mentoring
— build up users’ personal profiles to analyze their different situations and then provide an exclusive training plan.
— provide an exclusive nutrition plan option for the users

Sample dialogue — Lo-fi wireframes:
Unlike the normal graphic UX design, the VUX design focus on the conversation and dialogue sketching. So I selected one path of the user flow and sketched a sample dialogue as lo-fi wireframing.

Conversation design — VUX design:
According to the previous research, the majority of the interviewees are not familiar with smart speakers. Some feel that it’s unnatural to speak with a machine, or some have unsuccessful communication experience when using related devices. Thus, targeting these user’s pain points, I sketched the conversation as below:
— In the start section of the app, the app acts like a real person and introduces itself “ Welcome to Fitcher, I’m your personal coach”. It creates and gives the user a real conversation environment as the first beginning.
— When the user responses his/her name, the app can remember the name immediately and response “ Nice to meet you {his/her name}!”. Similarly, it makes the conversation more immersive.
— Once the user answers an unexpected response, the app will go to the wrong answer path and rephrase the question until the user understand what the app said and answer correctly. The setting is to make sure the conversation can go forward successfully.
— Considering different users have distinctive speaking utterances. So I design different slots, intents, and utterances in the conversation. Some samples are illustrated as below:

How to prototype the conversation?
I used Voiceflow online platform to prototype and do the Hi-fidelity wireframes. Since this is a Voice UX design, I will use three video clips(including normal path, wrong answer path, and stop path) to present the VUI design.

Usability test
During the design phase, I keep on doing the frequent usability test in order to make sure the conversation flow is working. I did the test by myself and invited my friends to test it. Then I summarized an affinity map based on the feedback.

Conclusion
This VUX design is the beginning part of the whole fitness app. As a teaser of the completed app design, there are some limitations as the test feedback mentioned. Despite this, it is an attempt to the voice UX area which might be the future trends of UX design.
