Needfinding
The problem context I chose for this assignment was tracking fitness goals, creating workout routines, and learning exercises with the correct form. The reason I chose this is that I am pretty into working out and also have struggled with keeping up with my goals, with my form, or with finding an effective workout split, especially when I was starting out. Such hardships were also quite demotivating when I was a beginner. Thus, I wished to discover whether other people had a similar experience or problem, and also whether the intimidation of unknown exercises and wrong form put people off of working out completely.
I interviewed three people about this problem. The first person was Aaryan, a student at Georgia Tech. He is a friend of mine and I interviewed him at Georgia Tech. The reason I interviewed him was that he works out regularly and can easily be classified as an end-user for my problem context. For reference, for the problem context I chose, the end users are people who work out regularly and people who do not work out at all.
I asked Aaryan about his views on fitness in general, to which he of course responded with it being a huge part of his daily life. I also asked him many questions about how he tracks his fitness goals, makes his workouts, and the hardships he has had figuring such things out, especially when he was a beginner. Aaryan said he uses mainly “Youtube videos from creators I know and extensive research through Google” when asked about making effective workout splits for himself. He also seemed quite open to the idea of having a tool to help make workout splits and track his goals. He believed that when he was just starting out, he did not have enough knowledge and the first 6 months of his routine were mostly “a waste of time”. Thus, he believes that having such an aid would have been extremely useful and helped him make better progress around the time he did not know as much about weightlifting. This helps support what I proposed about people being discouraged because of no knowledge of exercises or worse, doing things wrong and not making progress.
The second person I interviewed was Twisha, an Emory student. I know her through some of my friends here. I interviewed her at the SAAC at Clairmont. I chose her as she is another end user, however at the opposite end of the spectrum to Aaryan (as she currently does not work out at all).
I asked Twisha why she does not really work out anymore. With her answer, Twisha reaffirmed my suspicions of people being scared of working out or following fitness goals. She did so by telling me how she “felt intimidated by all the machines at the gym, as I didn't know what any of them were for”. Twisha also told me about how she enjoyed exercising outdoors a lot more (walking in Lullwater, jogging, skipping, etc.). This prompted her to bring up the idea of having a tool that is personalized for the specific user and caters to the type of workouts they want to do. In such a case, she would be tempted to use the tool. She does not want it to be restricted to weightlifting or workouts that she is not interested in.
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The third person I interviewed was Shriya, a student at UCLA. I know her through friends back home and talked to her over Zoom. I interviewed her as she fell about into the middle of my problem context’s spectrum. She works out regularly for certain time periods but does not work out at all for others. Basically, she exercises but irregularly/inconsistently.
When asked about her irregularity, Shriya said, “After 4 months or something, I just get bored because it’s the same thing over and over”. The biggest aspect for Shriya was variety. She wanted variety in her workouts and had trouble really finding such new exercises by Googling them herself. So, she would be open to changing her views on working out if she had a product that provided her with the variety she wants of new exercises every couple of months. Shriya also shared Twisha’s views on the individuality of the product and its being specific to the needs of each user. This made me infer that having filters for exactly what each user wants out of a workout is extremely important, rather than just providing popular workouts of one kind.
I found my interview with Twisha to be the most interesting as it got me thinking about many possible features of the solution I will be prototyping. Therefore, I have made an empathy map for her interview.
These interviews have provided me with a decent idea of what users want out of a product for this problem context. It seems that the most important is individualized experiences specific to users to keep them engaged and motivated as it caters to their wants and needs. The product thus needs to be flexible in the information it provides. Other important aspects to include are pictures/videos of correct forms of exercises, as well as the ability to set goals and be held accountable for them. I also believe that having links to reliable popular websites for information will only prove to be helpful to users. The product should be able to keep the users accountable and consistent without making them feel like they are being forced to do this (reiterating catering to exactly what they want through extensive filters).
