Fitness gamification: A product managers’ review of the Peloton bike (and the leaderboard)
Note: I plan to start using this space to write reviews of products that I love in a manner akin to the portion of product management interviews.
Most people have heard of Peloton, the start-up that is re-shaping fitness by “pulling people out of gyms and re-imaging the home workouts” through its stationary bike (and now treadmill). Peloton is already valued at $4B, and apparently has more subscribers than Soulcycle. The company has raised over $1B from investors and had revenues close to $700M in 2018 (vs. $400M in 2017).
The core product here is a stationary bike with an attached 22” tablet that costs ~$2200 and comes with a $39 per month subscription. The tablet (and the mobile app) can be used to access live classes which turn into an ever-growing library of on-demand content. Peloton also introduced a treadmill recently — I don’t use this, so my thoughts below are specifically on the bike.
From a retention and engagement perspective — Peloton claims that “96 percent of its customers remain subscribers, and its bikes are used an average of 13 times a month per household”. (Source: NYT)
In a sign that Peloton is now becoming part of the cultural zeitgeist, there is even a hilarious twitter thread about pretentious Peloton users. Peloton instructors are also mini-celebrities on social media. My favorite instructor, Robin Arzon, has ~200k followers on Instagram.
Who is the target user, and what are their problems?
To me, the target seems to be affluent people living in suburbs. Affluent given the pricing structure, and suburban because that’s where the pain of having to drive to a gym becomes more extreme. These folks might be conscious about fitness, but not maniacal. These folks might have young children, and/or tough jobs or other responsibilities that make time a premium
Current user journey alternatives to the product
- Going to the gym: typically takes 1–2 hours. Involves driving to a gym, checking in, finding a locker, having to work in with other people on busy days. For people with children, some gyms offer child-care, this is often extra cost and/or hassle.
- Going to a class: e.g. Soulcycle — typically need to find a class that matches your schedule
- Going running outside: most flexible option for a workout — don’t need any special equipment or membership, can just go out running in the neighborhood. But hard to do when it’s hot or cold or raining. I would imagine a reasonable proportion of this affluent suburban segment is now getting to an age (30s, 40s) where running injuries are becoming common and something lower impact would be preferable.
- Skipping the workout altogether: All too often — users have an excuse to skip the workout altogether. It is easy to justify not working out to yourself — too inconvenient, takes too much time, hard to fit live classes around my schedule, I am just prioritizing spending time with family etc.
Peloton solves these problems for these folks by offering flexibility and convenience thereby removing all the real and perceived barriers to working out. The thing is in your home — you just need 20–30 minutes of stolen time (while kids are sleeping, or otherwise engaged) to get a great workout in. So, for the same level of motivation — Peloton has just made it a lot easier to work out, hence triggering behavior change (this is the B.J. Fogg model for behavior change).
Gamifying Fitness: The Leaderboard
There are many things to talk about here — the business model, advertising and marketing strategy, pricing etc. All interesting things — the one feature that I am obsessed with is the Leaderboard.
The leaderboard gives you a live view of how you’re doing relative to everyone else (who has ever taken the class) and relative to your personal best. This view can also be filtered by gender and age categories.
I probably spend 60–70% of the class looking at the leaderboard — as a way to motivate myself to keep going harder, to set new personal bests or to keep up with the other riders. For me — this is the single most important feature of the product and the thing that motivates me to go back and keep going.
Let’s think about some of the problems/needs/ jobs that these users have, and how the leaderboard helps to solve for these.
Problems, needs, and jobs to be done
- Pre- workout : I need the motivation to work-out
- During: While I am working out — I want to make sure I am making the best use of my limited time and pushing myself hard enough
- Post workout: recap, what could I have done better?
Solutions — current and improvement opportunities
Pre-workout: I need the motivation to work out
- Current solution: Peloton has a “streak” feature — which tells you how many days in a row you’ve worked out, or gives badges based on streaks etc. Gamification at its best.
- Feature idea: Peloton could push me notifications or messages that tell me how much others are working out in that month.
During the workout: Am I pushing hard enough?
- Current solution: This is where the leaderboard excels. I can see how far I am from my personal best, and how I am going relative to others — in terms of output. This is the thing I use the most to make sure I am not slacking.
- Feature ideas: Given how much I focus on the leaderboard, peloton could experiment with foregrounding the leaderboard where it takes up more of the real estate. The room could be used for alternate visualizations — like a race track or a video game; which might make it more fun. In terms of metrics, the leaderboard gives you an absolute rank — but given that the number of riders for each class is different — I am always doing the math on what my rank means in terms of percent. Just give me that. Finally, the UX of the leaderboard makes it almost impossible to see what the leaders are doing in terms of performance (I think you have to scroll up to the top, which is tedious and error-prone for a large list) — there could be a way for me to see what cadence/resistance I need to be pushing to be close to the leaders
Post workout: What could I have done better?
- Current solution: Nothing really
- Future feature idea: The leaderboard could show me how I compared to others (top performers or a self selected peer group) on a range of dimensions — average cadence, resistance, improvement over time etc. Might offer guidance on things I could do to improve my performance next time.
One miscellaneous features that I love: Usernames on the leaderboard are a whimsical aspect of the product. There are some really funny ones — and the goal is to make the instructors laugh as they are doing shout-outs. Similar to transaction description comments in Venmo.
All views, opinions and statements are those of the author.
