Secondary Research

We started by grounding ourselves in existing research to identify known patterns before introducing our own assumptions.

Key findings from secondary research:

• Blurred work-life boundaries make it harder to carve out time for exercise. (Harvard Business Review)
• Prolonged sedentary behavior leads to serious health consequences including obesity, cardiovascular disease, and musculoskeletal problems. (World Health Organization)
• Remote workers struggle significantly more with maintaining motivation and accountability for exercise. (Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine)

Competitive Analysis

We audited the top fitness apps on the market - FitOn, Nike Training Club, and Strava - to understand what solutions already existed and where the gaps were.

The finding was striking: the market was oversaturated with apps competing on the exact same features - workout video libraries and activity tracking. Not one of them addressed the core friction points for remote workers: space constraints, motivation decay, or health literacy.

The question this raised for us:

If all these tools already exist - why are remote employees still struggling to work out at home?

Contextual Inquiry - Going Beyond the Survey

I knew surveys wouldn't give us what we needed. To truly understand our users, I led my team in conducting contextual inquiries with 4 full-time remote workers - a two-part method that combined traditional interviewing with real-time observation.

Part 1 - Conventional Interview

I developed and facilitated individual interviews to uncover each participant's relationship with exercise, their home environment, and what made staying active feel hard.

Key questions I used:

• Walk me through a typical day in your remote work life.
• Do you currently exercise? What does that look like?
• What gets in the way of working out when you're home all day?
• What would motivate you to move more?

Part 2 - Contextual Interview (Observation in Context)

In each session, I asked participants to walk me through their actual day in real time - not from memory, but as it happened. This gave me a window into behaviors people don't think to mention: the overflowing desk that doubles as a dining table, the apartment where the living room is also the "gym," the mid-afternoon slump that kills any intention of working out.

When I needed to clarify what I was seeing, I paused to confirm my interpretation rather than assume. This kept the data grounded in the user's reality, not my projections.

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A Challenge I Navigated - Privacy in the Home

What We Learned - Research Findings

Four clear themes emerged from our interviews and observations:

1. 01

   Lack of Motivation

   Even if the user begins their fitness journey, motivation would decline with little to no means of raising it up again over time.

2. 02

   Limited Space

   Living in small spaces can be difficult for people to exercise without having to go to an outside space such as a park or the gym.

3. 03

   Time Management

   Many participants expressed challenges in effectively managing their time while working remotely.

4. 04

   Need for Education and Awareness

   Participants emphasized the need for easily accessible information on the health risks of a sedentary lifestyle.

The key insight:

Most users weren't inactive by choice - they were active starters who hit a motivation cliff and had no tools to climb back up. The opportunity wasn't to get people started; it was to keep them going.

To make this tangible, I mapped a mini user journey tracing the emotional arc from initial motivation → routine establishment → motivation decline → dropout. This became our north star for identifying intervention points in the design.

User Personas

I synthesized our research into two personas that anchored all future design decisions - not as hypothetical users, but as distilled portraits of the real people we interviewed.

These personas kept the team grounded during ideation: every feature we considered had to serve Rickie or Shelley, not a generic 'fitness app user.'

If I Had More Time

• Conduct additional usability testing with a larger and more demographically diverse participant group.
• Refine micro-interactions and animation to make the reward system feel more satisfying and polished.
• Validate the PTO reward mechanic with real employer stakeholders to assess feasibility as a workplace wellness program.

Planned Next Steps

• Inclusivity. Design alternative exercise pathways for users with physical disabilities or mobility limitations.
• Professional Partnerships. Partner with certified fitness trainers and health professionals to create medically-informed workout recommendations based on individual health profiles.
• Richer Multimedia Content. Explore richer multimedia formats: video demonstrations, interactive body-weight calculators, and audio-guided workouts to serve diverse learning styles.