laura tomazic

Beat81

Background:

Beat81 is a fitness startup that began in Berlin, and has locations in a handful of larger cities in Germany. Beat81 is unique for their heart-rate monitoring, done by wearing a sensor. The users stats from sessions are saved on the app, along with points a user earns for hitting “highs and lows”. Learn more here.

Challenge:

The strength training and HIIT classes at Beat81 have a strong sense of community because users are moving together, as well as part-taking in partner exercises. The challenge is to bring this same type of united experience to a Ride45 cycling class, which is generally seen as a more solo journey.

Goal:

Working with the Beat81 Team, our goal is to create a “magic moment” during the session. By bringing some of the community-feel that is provided in the other group classes to Ride45, we can bring users together and excel progress and motivation. We will do this by improving connection, invoke pride and elevate users by utilizing the technology.

 

An obstacle will be to keep the focus on the physical class itself, and not the technology. We have to remember that tech should amplify the experience, not be the experience.

 

PROJECT PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT PREP (week 1)

Amanda, Lead Product Designer at Beat81, invited us to the company’s office for a debriefing. We learned the company’s values, past/present, and where they are headed. We gained insight into how the company runs, so we can be sure our solution is not only an aesthetic fit, but a cultural one as well.

We created a survey to learn more about users and their motivations, and did more research about Beat81s technology.

The technology in this case:

  1. The mobile app (used generally for booking classes or for checking stats from previous classes)

  2. The screens in the workout studios. They display every member of the group on their own card, along with the users heart rate, point count, calorie burn. (These are the stats saved to the app after class)

 

THE WAITING GAME (week 2)

After revision, our survey was sent out through Beat81s emailing list, to ensure results from dedicated Beat81 clients. We filtered the mailing list by people who have:

  • Attended at least three Ride45 workouts

  • Attended a Ride45 workout in the last month

While we waited for our survey results to come in, we worked on our interview guide.

 

THE RESULTS ARE IN (week 3)

We were very fortunate to receive 2,115 responses to our survey in just 3 days.

Our Main Learnings from the Survey (2115 responses) also brought up questions for our interview guide:

  1. Users are very athletic, and come to Beat81 for the scientific approach, but want more statistics.

    • Interview Questions: What are they hoping to take away from their experiences? If they’ve participated in other cycling classes, can they describe what makes Beat81 different?

  2. Music is the main push factor for the users, but the limited genre variety pushes them to try other cycling classes.

    • Interview Questions: How important is the role of music in their cycling experience? Which genres of music do they find most motivating?

  3. Most users are interested in challenges, but the format and the rewards are not appealing.

    • Interview Questions: How do we make challenges more inclusive? How would users feel about sharing or marking each others milestones within the classes? What kind of rewards or recognition would users find motivating for their achievements?

  4. Users feel more connected to the coach than other participants, and majority of users are loyal to only one or two coaches.

    • Interview Questions: How do users engage with the coach? Have users had the opportunity to engage with other participants before or after the Ride workout? Do they seek feeling connected to other participants? How does the coach impact their session?

 

We conducted 8 user interviews and began to condense our data. Here is what stood out:

 

THINGS ARE HEATING UP (week 4)

We had a check in with Amanda and discussed our findings thus far.

  • Users want to feel connected to the coach

  • Users like the independence of attending Beat81

  • Users are competitive, they are also looking for different challenges & rewards

The original goal, to create connections between the users, was out of the window, we needed to refocus on the coaches. Beat81 is super efficient. People want to get in, do an intense workout, and get out. Going with a friend is definitely a bonus though.

Our User Persona helped us focus in more on our users needs and frustrations.

 

IDEATON AND SOLUTION (week 5)

Our Problem Statement:

Beat81 users who want to enhance their progress and workout experience need to find a way to gain extra motivation and excitement about their workout, through the coaches guidance, because the lack thereof prevents them from reaching their full potential.

 

Reminder: Technology is not supposed to be the solution. Technology is supposed to amplify the solution. 

But even after brainstorming HMWs, we were quite stumped. We had lots of micro-solutions to multiple smaller issues, but not anything that could actually fulfill our original goal.

 

And then it came to us: A Team Challenge.

This solution came out of the collective knowledge we had about our users:

  • No strong desire to interact with other users

  • Want to feel connected to the coach

 

THE FINAL STRETCH (week 6)

The open questions that we had during our ideation of this solution, were all answered when we defined our User Journey.

While creating our User Journey for the new format, we also tried to conceptualize what could go wrong:

Three easy ways to prevent these issues are:

  • Clear explanations by the coach before class

  • Coaches ability to edit the teams on their module before the class begins

  • “Team Challenge” is displayed clearly on the app when booking

 

With access to Beat81s Brand assets, we were able to compose a HiFi prototype of the various screens involved in our solution, while implementing our own new Team Challenge assets.

 

Due to logistics and time constraints, we were not able to test our solution in reality.

Instead, we did concept testing, where we roleplayed, and walked users through a Team Challenge in two phases: 

  1. The mobile prototype of booking a Team Challenge class & inviting a friend to compete with you

  2. The user journey, alongside showing the different phases of the workout screens in the studios throughout the workout.

In general, the reviews were mixed. Users were interested, and said it could be a great way to push themselves further during the workout, but they don’t usually require extra motivation to attend Ride45. 

But still, everyone we interviewed also said that they would want to try it, were it to be implemented.

With the feedback we got on the mobile prototype during testing, we went ahead and implemented some changes to the booking process:

  • Making the TC tag more visible

  • Add a description of what a TC is

Here is our final Prototype:

To accompany the booking user flow, we also finalized the screens that would be displayed during the various phases of the workout.

Before the Workout: Users check in before the start of a workout, their tile on the screen turns green to show that they have arrived. In our solution, each user is assigned yellow or purple upon check in, so they know which side of the room to sit on.

During the Workout: Points are hidden, and only the heart rate is displayed, which means that users push themselves harder than they normally would, to ensure their team wins.

(The various shades of blues and reds correlate with how high a users heart rate is)

After the Workout: The Leaderboard! Displaying which team won, with the combined points, as well as individual scores, so users can see still see how they performed overall. Users scores are added to their stats on the app as normal.

 

IMPACT

We are proud to have found a solution that not only met our Stakeholders goals, but can be implemented easily and fast, without disrupting the existing structure of the classes or causing need to redesign the entire technology.

Through implementing Team Challenges, we can be confident that our solution is backed by user findings and solid research. Users are less interested in connecting with eachother, and place more value in coach guidance. Beat81 had asked us to find a way to create more unity, and we were able to achieve this by adding the element of team spirit to the experience, without forcing interaction between users. By providing connection, users can have pride for their teams achievements, while also feel elevated by how far they push themselves in the Team Challenges. By utilising the technology, and not confusing it with the main focus, we were able to amplify the real life experience of the Ride45 classes.

 
 

NEXT STEPS

  • Designing the user flow for accepting a Team Challenge invite from a friend

  • Creating more specific music tags for the classes, as well as offering more genres

  • Adding a “See who your friends book with” feature

 

THINGS I LEARNED

  • A friendly reminder to let the research guide you. If we had overlooked a few things, this project could have taken a very different turn. I am very grateful to be part of a project that was more research heavy. I thoroughly enjoy the process of organizing data and making connections that can lead to real solutions supported by solid findings.

  • This was a great exercise on project management and how to work on a timeline. Even when the research takes you in a different direction and the timeline needs to be adjusted, it is important to be flexible within a structured project.

  • *Not really a learning point, but it needs to be mentioned that I truly enjoyed working on this project. Though it of course involved product design, the emphasis on the real-life experiences of users within a physical space added a new level of complexity and perspective that I hadn’t been able to take part in before. I love this type of creative problem solving!