About
LVL Up is an app to gamify the workout experience. From the start, you choose an avatar to represent yourself on your journey to build the better you. Every day, there will be new quests for the user to complete by achieving exercise goals that help you gain XP, which will help level up your character. This will gain you access to new, equipment-free, exercises to help fight your enemies.
Create a team with your friends on your quests to encourage and hold each other accountable to gain higher XP when everyone completes their daily goals.
Research Insights
Since this was a generative project, we asked a wide array of questions in an attempt to grasp the reason our users were struggling maintaining active lifestyles.
Time was the most obvious of culprits and also the most present. It wasn’t until we started digging into what our users liked to do for fun that we discovered that gaming and exploration were two often discussed goals in our user base. In addition, our users valued the accountability of being active alongside friends.
This became our jumping off point in creating LVL UP, since we cant give users more time; how might we make the time they do have more productive and fun?
Users are generally unsatisfied with their activity levels.
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When directly asked, users clearly indicated they would like to be more active.
Users would often fail to meet fitness goals because of a lack of consistency.​
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Users acknowledged that a critical aspect of feeling as though they've accomplished their goals was routine.
Current motivators are not enough to inspire consistency.​
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Users did not suffer from a complete lack of motivation but admitted that current motivators were not enough to consistently get them moving.
Users cited using many different applications in the past to try to manage their exercise routines but grew bored of their sterile nature. Endless charts and graphs measuring progress were not enough to inspire consistency throughout their workout regiments.
Users also often cited goals being hard to maintain due to their lack of concreteness as user defined goals were easy to push to the side or modify based on the their mood.
Competitive / Comparative Analysis
Our focus is on inspiring activity levels through gamification and community building. The critical difference between us and our competitors is the combination of both the XP system and the Team Up system. Fitbit would be our closest competitor as they offer all the same functionality as far as native features but lack a real focus on team building and gamified progression.
Original Design
When designing the LVL Up! and wanting to gamify working out, we wanted to make sure that we weren't isolating potential users that may not be that much into gaming. The original design was dull and followed the same color schemes as other workout apps. The only differentiator was the XP and level system that most people outside of the gaming world would not understand. The original design, shown below.
The feedback from initial user testing was not good. Users were able to complete the tasks with no problems, but as one user put it, "There's nothing that sticks out about this. I am not a gamer, but I think you should go all-in with the game concept." He wasn't the only one who gave us this feedback. Many testers, if not all, had similar opinions. It is with this insight, we did a complete redesign in the short time we had left, creating an app that was both intuitive and unlike anything else in the market.
Redesign
Onboarding Screens
With onboarding, we looked at a number of fitness apps. For the most part, the onboarding process was nearly identical with every app. Normally 1-3 screens and than a menu to add on additional information about yourself. We stuck with the tried and true method, while keeping with the theming of the 8-bit era, including redesigning the toggle switches found in iOS.
Profile and Quest Screens
Redesign
Onboarding Screens
With onboarding, we looked at a number of fitness apps. For the most part, the onboarding process was nearly identical with every app. Normally 1-3 screens and than a menu to add on additional information about yourself. We stuck with the tried and true method, while keeping with the theming of the 8-bit era, including redesigning the toggle switches found in iOS.
Profile and Map Screens
The Profile screen allows you to see your progress for the day including the amount of steps you have taken, the amount of stairs you have climbed and the amount of XP you have gained for that day. You can also view the the quests you have to complete. This brings us to the quest itself. You can view the best path to walk/or run to that quest. Similar to Pokemon Go, there are a number of daily quests scattered throughout the city that you can walk to to earn your reward.
Party Screens
Party screens are there to help socialize the experience. During our user interviews, we found that the problem with motivation had to do with being held accountable. With the party system, you can add friends and keep track of their progress for the day, even going on quests together. If all members of a Party complete their daily goals, members receive an extra XP bonus.
Badges
Similar to Achievements on Xbox, or Trophies on Playstation, Badges are there to provide the user with more incentive to continue using the app for a longer length of time. When a user completes a goal from a Badge, which is separate from their daily goals, they get a notification and earn a Badge to put in their collection. Badges can be as easy to get as simply signing up for the app to as challenging as completing your daily goals for a full month.
What We Learned
Fitness and motivation is a tricky subject. Sterile fitness counters are often used and discarded as their focus is too heavy on the physical progress of the user which in and of itself can feed negative patterns. Additionally, you are always fighting with the users time. Modern life is busy and often users lose motivation throughout the day to be active.
The best way we found to circumvent not being able to give the user more time to exercise is to build a fun and engaging application that focuses on encouragement and inspire active lifestyles as a byproduct. Community and inclusiveness is yet another massive way to motivate users to be more active.
Next Steps
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Continue iterations on current design
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Create a more robust item selection with added shop to further inspire users to keep playing
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Quest lines and narratives to further accentuate the theming
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Augmented reality features when completing solo, group and raid requests (wave your arms like you're swinging a sword, do motions like you're casting a spell, move to dodge enemy attacks)