FITlife is a mobile app that provides workout and dietary insight and expertise. It designs to resolve the problem that the American general public lacks the knowledge on nutrition and dietary control. The app was developed to satisfy the needs of users who seek to burn fat, gain muscles, and improve cardio performances. It also designates to assist the users in planning meals to achieve all the purposes mentioned above. The dietary plans are made according to their
We are so confused: the problems with meal plan and exercise
For years, my friends and I had been working out in the gym and trying to stay in shape. However, I turned out to have a better result than many of my friends. So, I often occur to have them to ask me why it’s so hard to stay in shape. Most of them agreed that they knew they needed to sleep and exercise more, and eat right – but knowing and doing are different things. I started to investigate few of my friend’s daily routine and ask them: how many times they workout? How long is their workout session? Do they do cardio training or weight training? How many hours do they sleep? What kind of food they usually eat? And what, do you consider, is the most difficult part of your workout? After I dug deeper to uncover the problem behind the problem, I found there are plenty of potential hindrances – time, boredom, self-confident, and nutrition. Even though these barriers may relate to their bad outcome, I believe nutrition – a healthy meal plan is biggest factor that contributes to a good result.
Problem
Getting fit can be quite a challenge. However, it isn’t impossible. Even when you finally get ready to start working out, making time to do it can be challenging. To achieve your fitness goals, it is important to have great coaching and a sufficient workout plan. If someone doesn’t have a right dietary plan, his/her efforts on workouts could be pointless. According to an article on CNN, “scientists have long known that what you eat before, during and after you exercise can make or break a workout and possibly affect your fitness results.” (2017) Thus, to have a proper fitness plan supplemented with dietary plans will not only make one’s workout less painful but will also facilitate one’s workout performances.
Fitness apps have been popular in the past few years. However, the most famous apps such as Fitbit, Myfitnesspal and fit8 only provides recipes for the meal plan. This way is very hard to keep track of the calorie intake and calorie burn. So, if an app will provide a dietary plan for delivery to the users, it will save many troubles for users.
Goal
This app is designed to help people achieve workout goals by assisting them plan for workout and meals. I intend to improve the situations that people lack expertise on workout and nutrition, or have limited time to cook for themselves.
Overall, these two apps focus on a different target audience. MyfitnessPal is a weight management application. Its calorie tracking calculator is very powerful. Users can use it to calculate their calorie burn every day. Because its database contains a wide range of food information, it’s very convenient for users to log their daily food consumption. However, 8fit doesn’t cover this feature. Users will have a hard time to manage their plan. 8fit’s target audience is mostly gym enthusiast, but they may not be the experts. These people tend to have a tight schedule in their life. And they don’t know how they should adequately plan their workout agenda. 8fit saves their time and effort how to create this plan. how to create this plan.
Opportunities Identified
Workout training and nutrition are two major factors for improving user fitness results. FITlife should provide not only the services for workout education but also the knowledge on how to manage their weight to leverage the issue of obesity.
Before I started my project, I invited three friends to participate in this exercise. I seek to answer this answer to this question: what do they think about dietary meal plan and fitness plan? These answers would help me to wrap my head around the things they concerned.
Based upon the similarity of these ideas, I classified them into five different groups. I summarized the key points below.
– Meal plan supplements with a fitness plan. A customized meal plan would meet users’ different need for their fitness plan.
– Fitness plan could be tedious, but it has to be professional.
– Cooking is very time-consuming. Meal plan could ensure nutrition intake even though it may taste bad.
– Some concerns about the credibility of fitness app and meal plan.
Opportunities Identified
Exercise alone cannot drive significant weight loss. Diet is enormously important to fitness, weight loss, and health. FITlife should target different users’ need. It should generate the fitness plan and meal plan based upon user’s health information.
According to the references from affinity diagram, I designed this information architecture with the solution for improving the problems between meal plan and fitness plan. I suggest that fitness plan and meal plan should be easily customized to target different users’ goal. To ensure that users will achieve their goal, they can change their plans accordingly with the suggestions from the system.
Age range: 22-35
Gender: Both male and female
Income: middle income
Lifestyle: Young and trendy
Language: English
Device: Smart phone
Occupation: Young workers, students
Technical skills: Familiar with smartphone
Primary
The primary target audiences of FITlife are people aged 22-35. They have a busy schedule and don’t have time to cook, but they care about their body shape and work out regularly.
Secondary
The secondary target audiences of Fitlife are people who want a healthy lifestyle.
