Add a feature — Tone & Sculpt app
The Challenge
So this is my second project as a UX/UI student at Ironhack São Paulo. The problem provided here is fictional, but the research findings and methodology applied to develop are real. Let’s jump into the briefing:
Analyze an already existing and highly adopted app and incorporate a new feature into the existing product. The feature you develop will be based on an area of functionality to be explored and user research
The first step was to choose the app, and for that purpose, I decided to go for an app that I used daily which is my fitness and nutrition app named Tone and Sculpt.
About Tone and Sculpt
Tone and Sculpt app was created in 2018 by Krissy Cellar-which is the CEO and main trainer of the app- and now has over 200K downloads both on Google Play and App Store. The main goal of the app is:
to make women feel strong, in control and powerful! Tone & Sculpt promotes a healthy, balanced lifestyle, where nutrition and exercise go hand in hand.
The app has had great improvement in the past years, such as new videos and instructions, a more intuitive interface, more exercises, and so on. Added to that, the nutrition part of the app has had great improvement and has become one of the main differentiators of the app in the market. Below you can see a brief benchmarking comparing some app key points with other two competitors:
The nutrition section offers the user the possibility of creating its unique weekly meal plan based on the nutritional goals and restrictions the user has (for example, the user can select a vegan-based diet, pescatarian, etc.). Added to the meal plan, the user will also have a shopping list, that puts all the items of the plan into a list format, which makes it so much easier to shop for the goodies suggested in the meal plan, and facilitates for users to keep on the diet they have chosen. A great tool, right? Since this was a business area that was growing so much, I decided that I should think about a feature for the nutrition section of the app.
1 . Empathize | Desk research
It was not so easy to see how to improve it at the beginning because, at a first glimpse, the section has all it takes for users to keep a healthy and balanced diet. But one user (me) is not all users, so the best and the easier way I found to gather data about the users' pain points was by checking the community section in the app. The app fosters relationships between its users and on the community section, they can share doubts, tips, their improvement, etc. Other users and the community manager also reply in that section, making it a great source to understand the challenges the users face when using the app and during their fitness journey.
Many of the problems were related to how to prepare a meal or how to add or take off a certain ingredient. But one thing caught my attention, some users talked about how hard it was for them to shop for the items suggested on the diet. Sometimes because they didn’t know where to find that ingredient, other times because they didn’t have the time to shop, and even people who did not felt comfortable leaving the house during the pandemic. Check below some of these comments:
After identifying that trend in the comments section, I decided to run desktop research about grocery online shopping, to find out what were the current habits in the UK. I found that during 2020 grocery online shops have seen a dramatic market share increase, from 7% to 15%. Also, that the projected growth for that market during 2021 is over 100%, meaning that there’s a lot of space to grow and a lot of improvements coming in that area.
2 . Definition
Putting together the findings I did on my desk research, it was time to define what was the main pain/problem I was trying to address by adding a new feature in the nutrition section. After putting together into categories the findings I did on the research, I made an affinity diagram and found some trending topics: new technologies for online shopping, time constraints, and ingredients constraints.
I thought about doing a “how might we”, that turned out like that: how could the Tone and Sculpt app makes it easier for users to get the products they need to stick to the meal plan?
3. Ideation | Brainstorming
I decided to run 25 minutes of brainstorming to help me generate all sorts of ideas for that purpose. I used Miro for that and generated 14 ideas.
In the brainstorming session, I tried to avoid thinking about technical issues that each proposed solution might have. After that session, I decided to leave the mural as it was to take my mind out of it and come back with a fresh point of view. After coming back, I picked the ideas that looked like something that could be developed. Ideas such as mapping, rewarding, and simplify lists were the ones that really made me think about many outcomes. But the most challenging was “shop for them”. But how?
As I have already worked in a start-up, I knew a few things about APIs and how they could empower digital businesses to make so much more by integrating with other systems and data sources. So the feature proposed is:
Add a shopping feature to the nutrition section of the app, allowing users to purchase their shopping list and receive it at their house from a trusted grocery partner.
4. Prototype | Wireframe
Now it was time to see how that would work in the app. For this phase, I decided to make 2 low fidelity prototypes on Figma because I know that APIs are a time-consuming and expensive type of technologies, so I wanted to understand if we needed to go all the way with integration or if we just needed a semi integration to make the feature desired by the users.
- Prototype 1: the shopping feature is included but redirects to a grocery shop platform, so a part of the experience is of the Tone and Sculpt app.
- Prototype 2: the shopping feature is included and integrated with some grocery shop platforms, so all the experience is in the app.
I tested each prototype with 2 different persons each. As I didn’t have access to real users of the app (besides myself) I selected persons that had a fitness lifestyle and could potentially use the app. The main objective of the user test was to understand which user flow would make users engage better with the tool and if it makes sense the way it was designed.
During the tests, some curious information came out. Both users who tested prototype 1 (the one that redirects to the grocery shop page) clicked on the back button to go back to the shop list page as they didn’t understand why it was taking them there.
Oh, ok…is that it?
This is not the same app, is it?
By this kind of reaction, I understood that redirecting to the grocery shop page/app, made users drop the purchase as it raised doubts about the shopping process. On the other hand, when testing prototype 2, users were delighted by following the flow within the app, and they did not present big doubts along the way, besides some questions that a low fidelity prototype may bring.
With that feedback, it was possible to understand that even if the API is too hard to make, this would be the best way to implement that feature, as by doing so it would make users much more willing to finish the purchase process and actually achieve their fitness target by facilitating for them to stick to the meal plan.
After that, I developed the high-fidelity prototype in Figma. Check it below:
5. Afterthoughts and improvement points
- Because of my marketing background, I always love to look at data before moving forward with any decision. So for me, it would be important to check some data analytics of the app itself to crosscheck the comments on that section with some data analytics from the app itself as well as run qualitative research with users and/or a focus group to get a deep understanding of that problem.
- In a real case scenario, I would love to have the opportunity to make a final user test with the high fidelity prototype and maybe test in the app itself to see if users would really engage with it
- For this project, we already had an objective which was to add a feature, but the findings I did during the research really enriched my knowledge and made me think about many improvements that were not feature related, but flow related, so many times we just need to open our eyes and ears to new and good information to keep having good ideas.
- Another important learning with this project was to never rush processes because you already have got an idea. I now see the importance of a good empathize phase and how valuable user feedback is important in that process. As my professors always say: fall in love with the problem, not with the solution.
