Active XP

Level Up Your Fitness, Power Up Your Life

Overview

Problem

Many individuals aspire to improve their fitness but often face challenges such as a lack of motivation to maintain consistency and those who establish a routine frequently encounter burnout over time.

Solution

ActiveXP addresses these obstacles by providing an engaging platform that keeps users motivated and invested in their fitness journey, Through features like creating and leveling up a personalized character, setting and achieving goals, and earning meaningful rewards

My Role

UX researcher and UI Designer on a 4 person team

Scope

3 weeks - 60+ hours

Empathize - Exploring the User’s Needs

Research Approach

To gain a deeper understanding of our users' benefits and pain points, we began by conducting user interviews. This provided us with a large amount of data to help us make decisions during the design process.

Interviews

We conducted interviews with ten individuals to gain insights into their fitness preferences and the challenges they encountered with existing fitness gamification applications. The interviews comprised ten targeted questions exploring their current fitness and nutrition routines as well as their interest in gamified fitness solutions. Key findings from the interviews were:

  • Most users engaged in casual exercise but expressed a desire to establish a more consistent fitness routine

  • Many users reported experiencing burnout and a lack of motivation in maintaining their fitness goals

  • Users who had previously tried fitness gamification applications discontinued their use due to inaccurate exercise tracking, lack of steady progression, and overly complex user interfaces

  • Nearly all users highlighted the importance of receiving meaningful rewards to recognize and incentivize their progress

Surveys

To complement these insights, we distributed a survey with similar questions to a larger audience, enabling us to collect data from a broader sample and strengthen our analysis. Key findings revealed that:

  • 75% of users said leveling up based on workouts and nutrition would motivate them to stick to their goals

  • 58% of users said consistency was the biggest challenge they faced in maintaining a workout routine

  • 37% of users said activity and progress tracking would be their priority features

Define - Identify the User’s Needs and Problems

Persona Development

Through the data we collected during our user research we were able to identify a common pain point and need among our users. Although all of our users had put in the effort to start a consistent workout routine they eventually ran into a lack of motivation due to burnout or other circumstances. In order to work around this lack of motivation a user would need some sort of reward or incentive to help them stay consistent. With this point of view in mind we created a user persona for Felix Palmer, a 23-year-old gamer striving to stay active but frequently struggling to maintain his routine over time.

Journey Mapping

In order to further explore the point of view of the average potential Active XP user we created a user journey map for Felix Palmer. This helped us to identify key features that would need to be implemented into the application in order to ensure the users had the best experience possible. These features included:

  • Character creation and customization so users felt a personal connection to their avatars

  • Reminder notifications to help users stay motivated

  • Daily rewards for logging in to incentivize users to remain consistent in their routines

Problem Statement

Leveraging insights from our research, we focused on formulating a "How Might We" problem statement. After careful consideration, we refined and finalized a statement that accurately captured the core challenge we aimed to address.

“How might we motivate and inspire users to achieve their best self while ensuring they enjoy the process?”

Ideate - Laying the Groundwork

Competitive Analysis

To start out the ideation phase we wanted to take a look at our competitors and see what mistakes we could avoid and how we could stand out from the competition. We picked four applications to analyze: Fitness RPG, Walkr, Pikmin Bloom, and Level-Up: Fitness. During our analysis we found a few areas where we could standout compared to our competitors:

  • Most of the competitors focused on walking and only tracked steps, leaving a clear lack of progression for other forms of exercise

  • The majority of the applications featured none or very minimal character customization leaving users feeling disconnected from their avatars

  • All competitors lacked any form of nutrition tracking providing no incentive or reward for users to eat healthy

Story Board

We then decide to continue our focus on Felix’s journey and created a story board. This allowed us to once again empathize with Felix and helped prepare us to create a in depth user flow for our application.

User Flow

Before moving into prototyping, we synthesized our insights to create a comprehensive user flow. While our initial goal was to map out every aspect of the application, we ultimately decided to streamline the flow to prevent the prototype from feeling bloated or overly complex. As a result, we focused on the experience of an existing user who had already set up their account, highlighting their journey through the daily questing and leveling-up features. This refined approach ensured we were well-prepared to begin developing our prototype.

Prototype - Crafting Soulutions

Sketches

To start of prototyping we created sketches of our wireframes. This allowed us to prepare for our mid-fidelity and start to get an idea of how we wanted the application to look and feel.

Prototype

We then implemented our sketches into a gray scale mid-fidelity prototype. This prototype consisted of 11 frames that explored our user flow and took a user through our daily quest and leveling up features.

Mid-Fidelity User Testing

Before moving on to our final design we conducted 5 individual user tests of our mid-fidelity prototype to identify if users could complete our key objectives/tasks and find areas for improvement.


Objectives

  • Test if new users can set up their profile, understand the app’s purpose, and start their first quest without confusion.

  • Evaluate if users can understand how rewards are earned and how progress is tracked after completing quests.

  • Test if users can intuitively navigate the app’s main features, such as the home screen, quests, and training.

    Tasks

  • Navigate to the home page

  • Navigate quest menu and complete a quest

  • Spend an experience point

Mid-Fidelity Test Results

Our mid-fidelity usability tests offered valuable insights and feedback, such as:

  • Streamlining the user interface by breaking up content to minimize visual clutter.

  • Enhancing text readability by switching to a sans-serif font for improved legibility.

  • Improving daily quest visibility by adding clear identifiers to notify users of new quests.

  • Boosting user engagement with a "Welcome Back" page that highlights daily streak progress.

Style Guide

Next we created a style guide in order to find a clear brand and voice for Active XP. This allowed us to properly prepare for our high fidelity prototype.

High-Fidelity Prototype

Incorporating feedback from our usability tests, we refined our high-fidelity, clickable prototype, which consisted of 13 fully designed wireframes. This iteration maintained our existing user flow while integrating key improvements based on prior testing insights. Although he updated prototype was simplified it introduced several new features, including:

  • Guided user journey utilizing login prompts to lead new users through their daily quest

  • Updated font for better readability

  • Page indicators to better display where the user is within the app

  • Updated graphics for the character avatar and progress animations

Testing - Validating the Solution

User Testing Plan

We conducted 5 user tests of our high-fidelity prototype in order to get valuable feedback that we would use for future iterations.

Objectives

  • Test if users can start their daily quest without confusion.

  • Evaluate if users can understand how experience is earned and how progress is tracked after completing quests.

  • Test if users can intuitively navigate the app’s main features, such as the home screen and quests.

Tasks

  • Navigate to the home page

  • Navigate quest menu

  • Complete daily quest and level up

Feedback

Users found the prototype intuitive and navigated it with ease. However, they also provided valuable feedback on potential improvements and features they would like to see in future iterations, including:

  • Enhancing the depth of the questing system by incorporating story elements to further incentivize progression.

  • Introducing a section for users to create personalized workouts tailored to their individual needs and goals.

  • Implementing a reward system for leveling up, such as earning skill points, to keep users motivated and engaged.

Revisions and Next Steps

For our revisions, we primarily focused on minor adjustments, such as correcting button colors and ensuring menus appeared on the appropriate screens. While we were eager to implement some of the user-recommended features, time constraints required us to prioritize essential refinements. That said, we strongly suggest incorporating features like story elements, personalized workouts, and skill points as next steps.

Additionally, our team has future plans to enhance the experience further. These include expanding the nutrition tab to help users track meals and make informed dietary choices based on their fitness goals, as well as developing a more detailed character creation menu, allowing users to customize their avatar’s gender, starting outfit, and hair and skin color. We believe these additions will move us closer to our ultimate goal—transforming fitness into an engaging adventure rather than just another tracking app.

Reflections & Key Takeaways

This was my first project focused on gamification, and as a gamer, I found it both enjoyable and intuitive to design with the user’s perspective in mind. The creative freedom in developing the visuals for our prototype was especially rewarding, as it drew inspiration from games and media I personally love. Additionally, conducting the competitive analysis was a valuable learning experience, providing insight into what works—and what doesn’t—in similar applications. This process reinforced the importance of competitive analysis in shaping effective and engaging user experiences.