Major project
Easy Fitness [Read more]
EasyFitness is an AI assistant that helps young Chinese adults keep fit in an easy and happy way.
EasyFitness is a fitness management app that provides AI-driven service for Chinese young people over 18 years who have busy work and social lives, who want to feel confident while self-managing their diets and exercise but lack the knowledge needed to interpret their diet and workout data, and who are anxious and stressed with the existing services.
The AI assistant helps users understand their diet, exercise and weight data more deeply. Users will not have negative emotions of anxiety, remorse and regret because of a weight gain or a high-calorie cheat meal. The healthy and delicious recipes provided in the product make users realise that delicious food can still bring unexpected health effects, and change their perception that they need to eat cold salad to lose weight.
The challenge
Research suggests disease prevention has become a trend. Young Chinese people are increasingly interested in health management and monitoring. However, they experience some obstacles to understanding their data for health management and monitoring and tend to feel anxious and depressed.
The aim of this project was to help young Chinese people understand their workout and diet data and help them keep fit in an easy and happy way.
User research
In-depth contextual research was conducted to gain deep qualitative insights into young Chinese adults' motivations, attitudes and behaviours when keeping fit and losing weight.
Methods included:
Five interviews with young Chinese people to get to know them, their habits and activities surrounding keeping fit and losing weight.
Six diaries studies where participants were asked to report their diet and exercise experiences on a daily basis to bridge the gap between what they ‘said’ and what they actually ‘did’ and ‘felt’.
Key insights and opportunities
Data was collated and analysed using affinity mapping. Key insights included:
Key insight 1: Lack of choice
Busy young Chinese professionals want to eat tasty and healthy meals while working hard to reward themselves and improve their well-being. However, finding tasty, low-calorie food is difficult, so they tend to choose tasty, high-calorie food and feel guilty about it.
Key insight 2: Anxious and depressed
Busy young Chinese professionals want to eat healthy meals and enjoy their leisure time socialising with friends and colleagues. They want to maintain their friendships while also staying in shape but often feel anxious and depressed because they believe their previous efforts to manage their weight have been negated by eating too much high-calorie food.
Key insight 3: Unsatisfied and confused
Busy young Chinese professionals want to monitor and self-manage their diet and exercise throughout the day to stay in shape and feel confident. However, they are often required to input too much data and are not provided with useful interpretations of their workout and diet-related data, making it hard to evaluate their lifestyles.
Design iteration
Insights were turned into opportunity statements and “How Might We?” questions were generated to think of divergent solutions to the issues.
These were consolidated using an opportunity matrix and an initial concept was expanded to include key features and design principles.
A co-design session with 5 users helped refine the idea further. Card sorting and the MoSCoW prioritisation method were used to finalise features and user requirements.
Feature1 See analysis of the data
Feature 2: Ask the AI assistant for help
Feature 3: Find healthy and tasty recipes
Lei Zhang
I am an responsible and empathetic designer willing to use design to support a better future for people and the planet.
Major project
Easy Fitness