Husky Health is a system of interactive and educational interfaces that guide Northeastern University students through the process of working out and improving their health. Many students are anxious about going to the gym and have little knowledge of where to start. Through months of intensive user research, prototyping, and iteration, my partner and I developed a design intervention that is easily accessible to these students as it offers specific advice and guidance when they are on campus, on their phones, or in the gym.
Skills:
User Research
UX/UI Design
Experience Mapping
Prototyping
Storyboarding
End-User Feedback
Course:
Experience Design 1
Partner:
Heather Carminati
1. Problem Framing
Pop-up Exhibit:
When determining what problem we wanted to tackle for our project, I was inspired by a pop-up exhibition ("Exercise Anytime Anywhere") that I had conceptualized and designed earlier in the semester, which also aimed to improve the health of students on campus. The following slides showcase the concept and storyboard scenarios of the intervention, which primarily focused on setting up workout equipment and challenges across campus. While it was a definitely a fun concept, we were unsure of its practicality and worried that it would not be able to resolve the crucial issue of anxiety for those that are new to exercise.
Territory Mapping:
The assignment required us to keep our project under the scope of "well-being" and "hyperlocal." Thus, we created a territory map highlighting the people, places, goals, concerns/limitations, timeframes/scheduling, and activities that relate specifically to the the topic of college students' health and well-being.
Problem framing:
Utilizing our territory map and learnings from my previous project, we were able to identify a problem that many students, like myself, face, which was the struggle to improve their health due to anxiety caused by going to the gym. We used this to create a "how might we" question that would allow us to explore various areas of research and experiment with multiple design solutions:
How might we make conditions around working out more inclusive and inviting, so that college students with little experience and motivation can feel comfortable, are not discouraged, and are more likely to continue exercising?
We also identified 4 goals that we wanted our design intervention to accomplish:
1. Get Northeastern students to go to the gym
2. Increase gym retention through routines
3. Make physical health knowledge more accessible
4. Increase student motivation and reduce anxiety
2. Research
Our primary research process involved the following 4 steps:
Experience:
Experience Mapping:
I first observed the existing experience of someone in our target audience of college students who felt anxious about working out. I visualized their emotional and motivational levels throughout their first day of going to the gym, as well as their actions and thoughts. Because the experience happened months before this mapping, I was also able to record their 3-month reflections. This mapping allowed us to capture the source of anxiety and insecurity for these students, which included having to work out around other people, having little knowledge of exercises and gym equipment, and general physical exhaustion. Despite these concerns, we learned that students still felt positive about the fact that they were taking care of their health, so we were optimistic that our solution would be able to improve both the physical and mental state of our peers.
Expand:
Participatory Probe #1:
The second step of our research process involved getting a wider range of specific information about our audience's problems, feelings, needs, and desires when it came to their health/going to the gym. We tasked 8 participants with describing examples of their feelings at the gym, information that they wish they knew about improving their health, external factors preventing them from doing so, and their ideal environment for exercising. Having very specific pain points and situations described to us by our target audience was incredibly valuable during our prototyping stage.
Ideation:
From our initial research, we storyboarded four potential ideas for interventions, two for getting students to the gym and two for when they were at the gym.
Concept:
Participatory Probe #2:
As we began to explore potential solutions, we decided it would be beneficial to present some of our ideas to our audience to see if they would be effective. We formulated some of our solutions and placed them in the purple boxes shown below, and then had several students use different colored sticky-notes to answer how effective they would be. Through this probe, we learned that having information easily available on how to perform exercise and having virtual assistance were features that almost every student wanted. We were able to eliminate some of our initial ideas through this probe, such as the reward/recognition and the more-experienced workout buddy systems that gave students unwanted attention.
Secondary Research:
We also conducted a lot of secondary research, which included the articles below. Most of this research involved learning about how students can counter intimidation caused by going to the gym, the physical and mental benefits of exercise on college students, and precedent solutions, such as display technology and an accountability partner.
Secondary Sources
Secondary Sources: Precedent Solutions
Concept Development Scenarios:
After the concept stage of our research, we visualized a first draft of our final approach through two scenario-based storyboards: one detailing how a student could interact with our intervention around campus and the other showing how they might use it at the gym.
While the storyboards elaborate more on our intervention, here is a brief summary: Around campus, students will see screens that promote health and exercise. They will read helpful information such as recommended exercises, diets, and a list of the least busiest times at the gym. Students will have the option of sending this information to their emails and will receive notifications with instructions and encouragement to go to the gym. At the school gyms that they will be instructed to go to, students will be able to interact with screens on equipment that show video guidance on how to use them. There will also be a survey option to rate their exercise experiences, as well as displays around the gym highlighting the benefits of working out.
End-users:
End-user feedback:
My partner and I conducted extensive interviews and walk-throughs of our concept with four of our end-users to see if our current concept, if implemented, would be helpful to them. We asked what aspects of our intervention they would change to make them more likely to interact with it and actually benefit from it. The four most common points of feedback we received during our interviews are listed below.
Design Iterations + Initial Prototyping:
Using the feedback we received from our end-users, we created logos and initial prototypes that would be iterated on during the final stages of our design. Mainly, we added a "create your own workout regimen" option to the on-campus prototypes and elaborated more on the gym prototypes. We also decided on "Husky Health" as the name for our intervention!
3. Final Design Intervention
User stages:
Below are the intended twelve stages that Northeastern students will go through when using Husky Health.
The outline above can be divided into three main parts of our solution:
Around Campus:
Revised storyboard for interacting with Husky Health around campus:
On-Campus Prototypes:
The prototypes below showcase the informational and interactive components of the intervention. The top menu will be dedicated to displaying useful health information, such as easy recipes for college students, exercises to do at home, and least busiest times at nearby gyms. The bottom menu is dedicated for students that want to create their own workout regimen by completing a questionnaire. While we initially planned for students to complete the questionnaire on the prototype, we decided it would be more comfortable for students to do so on their phones, especially since many of the questions ask for personal information. Students will select from one of the major 4 goals listed below and will be led to a QR code that they can scan in order to complete the questionnaire on their phones.
Context:
Below are images of what the intervention may look like on-campus, specifically in the Curry Student Center near Popeye's. It will be implemented in spaces where there are a lot of students staying a place/waiting instead of quickly passing by. A few examples: food places around campus, lobby in Ryder Hall, printers in Snell Library, etc.
On Student's Phone:
Revised storyboard for interacting with Husky Health on students' phones:
Husky Health App Prototypes:
After students scan the QR code on the on-campus screens, they will be able to complete the survey shown below on the left. Our (imaginary) health experts will use the information provided to develop a full, week-long workout regimen for each student. Students will receive their regimen on the app within 24 hours. They will be able to view the full list, length, and descriptions of workouts, as well as all of the useful health-related information that they saw on the on-campus interfaces.
Day 1: Filling out the survey
Day 2: Viewing workout regimen and other helpful health-related information
At the Gym:
Revised storyboard for interacting with Husky Health at the gym:
At-the-Gym Prototypes:
Students will be able to select specific workouts and difficulties on equipment at the gym based on the workout regimen that they received on the Husky Health app. Each of the displays will have video and textual instructions on how to perform the exercises and for how long. The video component makes it easy for students to check their form and follow along with the pace of the instructors.
Context:
Below are images of what the intervention would look like at campus gyms, specifically the Marino Center. The screens will be placed in easily noticeable but unobtrusive spaces where students can easily follow along with shown exercises. Other spaces for this intervention include SquashBusters Center, Cabot Center, and the YMCA.
Next Steps:
Due to the limited scope and timing of the project, we were unable to expand and implement our refined design interventions at Northeastern. However, we identified a few next steps that could be utilized for the implementation of the project in the future:
