The Brief.
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Sector: Health and Fitness
Challenge: iHive is a fitness app that helps teachers to find cover for their classes. Fitness teachers struggle to get reliable cover for their classes and sometimes that translates into cover instructors that no show up for classes or that the class delivery is quite poor. iHive allows teachers to find reliable and qualified individuals to cover their classes and keep up the standard teaching.
My Role: Generative Research, Evaluative Research, Validation Research, Wireframing, Interface Design, Prototyping, User Testing and Branding.
Project Time: 8 weeks
What I did.
Problem statement
In the fitness industry group exercise classes are very relevant and many people join fitness clubs for the sole purpose to enjoy group classes. Nowadays it is quite difficult to find cover for classes because some teachers don’t have relevant qualifications, don’t show up and/ or don’t have enough experience. Some teachers lose their permanent classes because the low quality instructing of their teachers.
User 1: As a new teacher I want to be able to find classes to cover to gain experience
User 2: As an experienced teacher I would like to find permanent classes to teach
User 3: As a gym owner I want to find teachers with the relevant qualifications and reliable.
Brand and strategy kick off
For the generative research I focused on researching the main competitor: Cover Ninja and secondary competitors: Facebook Gand Whatsapp groups.
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This produced some insights:
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The signing up process for Cover Ninja is quite frustrating because it will only let you access the Homepage if you have uploaded your certificates and insurance beforehand.
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Facebook groups are quite unreliable to find cover teachers
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Whatsapp groups are more reliable but very limited.
Surveys
We surveyed 40 fitness teachers and managers to find out about the process of finding cover for fitness classes in the London area. These were the insights:
- They were all using equally Facebook and Whatsapp groups to find cover but almost none were using cover apps
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- 45% of them found “moderately” difficult to find cover. 26% found somewhat or very difficult and 28% found it somewhat easy or very easy.
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- Their main source to find classes to cover was whatsapp groups with a 55% followed by Facebook groups 35%. 28% of them were using both of them. Only 1 person out of the 30 is using an app to find cover
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- 52% of them were checking for cover opportunities when the get alert. 38% used to find opportunities when they are commuting, lunch break, at work, when they get an alert and at home. 28% they checked for class to cover when they are at home.
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- All of them use their mobile device to find cover opportunities. Three of them also use their tablet and pc.
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- 82% of them would download an app if that means that will find more class cover opportunities. 18% of them may do it. No one replied that will not do it.
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- 62% of them haver never used an app to find cover and 38% have done it.
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- Of that 38% that have used an app before…. 50% were very or somewhat satisfied against the other 50% that were very or somewhat dissatisfied.
Competitor app evaluation research
This was conducted with 6 participants matching our target audience. All of them are fitness teachers and ask for cover on a regular basis.
Participants were set three tasks to see how well the competitor apps handled three key user journeys: Sign up, get cover for a class and find details to contact Cover Ninja.
This empathy and customer map reflect the journey process that experienced all participants
User persona
Meet Mauro
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We built Mauro from data we gained through primary and secondary research.
Mauro helped to guide our design process. Every decision we made was meant to help him achieve his goals.
In case you missed the highlights...
1. Mauro would like to find reliable cover
2. Mauro would like to find an app that is easy to use and can keep as a class calendar
3. Mauro would like to ask for cover with one click rather than type endlessly
4. Mauro would like to choose what teacher covers his class
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Information arquitecture
A sitemap was developed to organise the content in the most logical and user-centric way possible.
Design
Wireframe prototype for evaluation research
Now it was time to test my ideas for a new, better app with people. Combining the inputs so far, I used Adobe XD to create a wireframe prototype.
The same participants used in the competitor app research gave feedback again. The key insights from this round of research were:
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- They were very happy that they could see the Homescreen without uploading their certs straightaway
- They like the design system
- They classes calendar was very welcomed
- They option to record notes was very well received
- They suggested the option to be able to gather all their classes on the app and the app could calculate their tax return
- Also the option to “rate” a teacher gave mixed opinions and they suggested to only rate a teachers in terms of reliability and not their instructing
- They liked the idea to be able to choose who covers their classes rather than being “first come first saved basis”
- Thumbs up for give the option to change their location in order to find cover.
Final High Fidelity Prototype
Second round of evaluation research
We are currently on this process. This will help us to gather input from participants and make those necessary changes.
Mockups
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The Result
This project has been very relevant for me for various reasons:
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- I am a yoga teacher and this idea of developing this app came as I need that teacher have in the wellness community to find relevant cover for classes.
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- I have attended numerous workshops, talks to UX designers and researchers, ask for feedback and invest a lot of time to create a final project that is relevant for people in the industry.
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- The main idea behind this project is to pitch it to investors and develop an app that is needed in this community.