Professional Photos used in this project were sourced from Pexels under the Pexels License.
MyFitnessPal was a copyrighted entity (2020) of Under Armour Inc as of writing.
MyFitnessPal was a copyrighted entity (2020) of Under Armour Inc as of writing.
The Brief
Teams of students were asked to take up a hypothetical scenario to evaluate the usability of an existing application and design a new prototype which takes on-board user feedback in the User-Centric Design process.
The health and fitness application market is growing rapidly, with predictions from Grand View Research showing the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 44.7% yearly through 2026. With the expansion of the market, a surge of new applications is expected to bring further competition to an already saturated market.
MyFitnessPal is a veteran application in this space, being originally conceived and developed in 2005. With the addition of new features and functionality over time, our team hypothesised that the application was no longer an attractive option to consumers. The interface had become over-burdened with options, it had a heavy focus on making features only available to paid subscribers, and it's outdated UI lacked the visual appeal and gamification features that most competitors had adopted.
Identifying Issues
To evaluate our team's hypothesis, usability studies were conducted to investigate how effective the application was in meeting the five quality components of Usability. Participants were observed in how they undertook several common and important tasks in the application. These tasks were determined by ranking common workflows in the application and evaluating the application's selling points.
Findings from the study revealed that the interface lacked several critical indexing features (such as search and filtering options), which made it difficult for participants to quickly sort information presented to them. Some participants felt under-prepared for the terminology used within, in which the application did not attempt to educate or guide the participant on, leading to confusion. Another point was the aggressiveness of advertising and resulted in some participants feeling disgruntled with the application overall. Some usability points were also mentioned, showing how the interface failed to consider usability in some key areas.
With our findings, the team split to individually design and develop prototypes for a new application. The proof-of-concept would focus on the usability features of the application, including the structure of the navigation flow, and how information was presented to a user.
Ideating Solutions
Using Figma, an interactive prototype of the application was created, functioning to serve as a proof-of-concept for the new navigation interface.
Sources
Grand View Research. (2018). mHealth Apps Market Size, Share, Trends. Retrieved from Grand View Research: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/mhealth-app-market
Nielsen, J. (2012, January 3). Usability 101: Introduction to Usability. Retrieved from Nielsen Norman Group: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/