UX of Cardio Machines
How Life Fitness made working out more enjoyable
Back when I lived in LA, I had a membership to LA Fitness. I would drive around LA quite a bit for work and so it was useful that the membership would allow me into any of the LA Fitness gyms in the area. They ended up opening up a brand new one right next to my work last year, and I was excited to check it out. The new building was beautiful but was one of the first things that I noticed were the shiny new cardio machines. LA Fitness uses Life Fitness machines, an American fitness brand that specializes in cardio equipment.
The first thing I noticed about these new machines was the screen interface. It had been significantly simplified from what I was used to on past models. I remember this being one of my first observations of UX in a product that wasn’t my phone. I was a little blown away by the difference. Here are the two screens side by side.
As you can see, it’s a pretty drastic difference. The newest models have completely removed the number pad, iPod functionalities, and pre-made workout options. The only interactive pieces are the start, stop, pause, and changing the difficulty value buttons.
And to be honest, I love it. I’d really like to know their thought process behind their decision making, but I think they nailed it. If you did a heat map for the screen interface, I’d put money on the fact that every button they got rid of practically never gets used. I know I didn’t use them. I think this is great example of The Paradox of Choice; when too many options start overwhelming the user, they don’t know what to do, and they “quit”.
Another thing to note is the new LCD interface. In the previous model, the users would just see their “incline” level. To me, this was always confusing. It showed nothing beneficial in the context of your time spent on the machine, as it had no start and endpoint. The new LCD is a step in the right direction and is how I’ve always viewed my workouts. Your 40-minute run seems a lot more manageable when it’s broken into smaller, bite-sized pieces, which is what they’ve done with the new model. When you start using the machine, it’s defaulted at the start with 60-minutes. As you continue your workout, the circle slowly turns to complete as you get closer to 60 minutes. 60 minutes is a lot for some people, but the user still gets that satisfaction of completion with some smaller ticks along the way, as each tick is 2.5 minutes. I really enjoyed this new experience.
When I used these new models for the first time, I had a much better feeling than using the older models, and it made me hope that it would spark more people to use these machines. I felt less overwhelmed. I think with the old models, I also felt like I was missing out on something because I wasn’t using the preset workouts. A daily reminder to KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid!
