Product
Funsport — an fitness training kiosk designed for school student trainings
My Role
Responsible for feature development, one of them featured in this case study
Team
12 members, including PMs, sales, back-end and and testing engineers
Impact
The feature is released and used by 150k+ students in Chinese middle schools, promoting engagement
My goal is to design a student center that provides key information about individual training, including their progress, achievements, and places for improvement. By utilizing this feature, students should be able to manage their data better, and engage in training more.
Background
Funsport is an interactive kiosk that has been successful in school settings, providing students with interactive fitness training supported by AI. To better support individual training, the product team is now envisioning a new feature — the student center, to help students manage their personal training progress and improve engagement.
Design Goal
The Problem
The old state of fitness training in Chinese middle schools was disorganized. Due to a high student to teacher ratio (typically 40:1), students receive little personal feedback on their training progress or performance, leading to a lack of motivation and consistent engagement. With the arrival of Funsport, students can train without the supervision of a teacher, and their data gets recorded. However, personal data needs to be organized and displayed in the most effective way for students, and my role is to figure this out.
A Typical Process in Will’s Training Day
Based on previous research notes from the product team, interviewing the PM, and casually interviewing students on a field visit, I analyzed students’ training process and identified pain points.
Students’ training is not documented, or evaluated.
After participating in training, students usually are directly dismissed. They don’t receive documentations, feedback, or personal evaluations on their performance. Adding to that is repetitive training, making them unmotivated to volunteer for more training.
“How might we effectively organize personal training data to motivate and attract students for more training?”
THE DESIGN CHALLENGE
The First Prototype
I built the first prototype of the student center with 3 main components — badges, to reward training and display achievements; goals, to visualize progress and incentive actions; and performance & analysis, to provide data analysis and feedback.
A Smarter Path: Rethinking Will’s Process
Based on the problem analysis, I envisioned a path that provides more incentivization and personal information for Will, aiming for rewardedness and fulfillment.
Iteration 1 — Goals feel distant
I conducted some initial testing with students and stakeholders, and an important feedback I got was the goals feel distant because the progress moves forward slowly, and students lose momentum in the wait. Therefore, I explored different ways to set goals and motivate students, and fastened the process of being rewarded.
Iterations exploring different incentivization mechanism
feedback: they had questions about how to get the badges, ask students to estimate how long they will be able to gain the badges
Solution: adding progress bar (3 versions)
Iteration 3 — Rewards become repetitive over time
When I presented the design to the PM, she raised a concern if the badges can attract students to engage in training in the timeline of a semester and consecutive years. In the current setting, badges will get repetitive with monthly awards, and the interest might wear out in the long run. Therefore, I thought about adding themes to the badges, iterated on different versions, and believed a travel theme will create an adventurous, sustainable experience,
Iteration 2 — Data Information Overload
Process: what do students need to see? 1. performance indicators (scores, best, average), 2. historical data (shows trends), 3. improvement points, 4. moments. 5. rankings
At first glance: general idea of their performance, position, scores, need more or less training
Solution: from all information to overview + detailed page
An Optimized Route for Will
With the final design, I successfully rewrote the story of Will going through his training journey, and now he’s motivated and informed.
FINAL DESIGN SOLUTION
Get Informed and Inspired.
Students can view their progress, take actions, and evaluate themselves by checking out the student center.
FINAL DESIGN SOLUTION
Make Training an Travel Adventure.
The badge collection is resembled by an interactive map, making the training experience fun and sustainable.
FINAL DESIGN SOLUTION
Overview or Detailed Reports — Your Call.
Students will have access to up to date personal analysis and reports, accessing their performance trends and evaluations at no time.
As my internship concludes, the development of this feature will keep going. Future development I proposed was to refine the detailed interactions in the badge map section, and envisioning collaborative training. For example, if student accounts can be interconnected to show comparative ranking, achievements, or cooperate to train together, more growth are expected.
Driving Growth Through Design
This design project is strictly tied with the business strategy of Funsport.The goal is not only to improve user experience, but also increase growth. In this experience, I learned how to incorporate behavioral principles and gamification to realize engagement growth, and how to collaborate with cross-functional teams to measure reception and impacts.
Evolving the Experience: What Comes Next
Success by the Numbers
8%
Increase in monthly training participation
150k+
Total users in schools across China
90%
Positive feedback reported by sales team
