Gamified fitness app using AI to track progress and motivate users through challenges and competition.
Case Study
Stride offers a unique and exciting fitness experience that seamlessly fits into our busy lives. By gamifying traditional workouts with games and challenges, it introduces a competitive edge that motivates users to push their limits and become the fittest among players. Using advanced AI technology, your camera tracks your movements, measures your progress, and adjusts your in-game performance accordingly. The result is a fun, engaging, and rewarding way to stay fit, keeping users motivated to return and reach their fitness goals.
The fight against willpower and consistency.
During my research, I noticed that maintaining motivation is a universal struggle in fitness. Many people start with enthusiasm but lose momentum within weeks. This cycle often stems from our tendency to seek immediate gratification—whether it's skipping a workout for comfort or avoiding discomfort altogether. Fitness apps, much like other self-improvement tools, often fall short because they rely on consistency, which is hard to sustain without engaging features or external accountability. This makes breaking old habits and forming new ones a continuous challenge that requires more than just willpower to overcome.
With that in mind, I framed the problem: How can we support struggling athletes with their training so they can stay motivated over longer periods?
Kick Off
MOSCOW Method
To get as many ideas as possible, I conducted a brainstorming session. Most of the ideas pointed out one specific area of the app, highlighting key features and potential improvements. I then categorized these ideas using the MOSCOW method, prioritizing them into Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, and Won't-Have categories to ensure a clear focus on what is essential for the app's functionality and user experience.
User Personas
To ensure Stride meets the needs of a diverse user base, I created four detailed user personas representing key fitness audiences. These personas were developed based on research into user motivations, frustrations, and goals, ensuring the app delivers value across different fitness journeys.
Competitive Analysis
To differentiate Stride in the competitive fitness app market, I analyzed top apps like Nike, MyFitnessPal, Strava, and Fitbit. This revealed gaps such as missing habit tracking, dynamic goal adjustment, and AI-driven insights.
Stride addresses these with personalized workouts, habit tracking, gamification, and progress visualization. By emphasizing social accountability, community challenges, and actionable AI-driven insights, it delivers a uniquely engaging and user-focused experience.
These insights shaped Stride's core features, ensuring a more robust and compelling platform than its competitors.
User Flow
Structure and streamlining the concepts
The user flow was created to visualize the app's screens, plan future flows, and structure ideas for the app.
Information architecture illustrating the user flow for Stride
Wireframing
Wireframes were crafted to
map out app screens, explore future flows,
and structure key ideas effectively.
Impact Created
For this project, a mobile-first approach was adopted
This means that design efforts were initially focused on mobile devices, with plans to explore a desktop version in the future. This approach was influenced by data indicating that approximately 70% of platform users access it via mobile devices.
Colour Scheme
The color palette features a vibrant neon green paired with dark, muted backgrounds. The neon green symbolizes energy, progress, and vitality, while the dark tones provide a sleek, modern contrast that enhances readability and usability. This combination ensures a visually engaging experience that remains professional and accessible to all users.
Home Screen
Early on, I removed the home navigation, as it felt cluttered and disorganized, opting instead for a top burger menu to keep the design simpler and more cohesive. This iterative process allowed me to quickly test navigation logic, visualize user flows, and refine the experience, prioritizing clarity and usability to create a seamless and engaging final product.
Key Takeaway
Reflection on the project outcome
Stride was an incredibly rewarding project that pushed me to bring a concept to life quickly, from research to final design. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of crafting detailed wireframes and watching them transform into a polished, visually appealing user interface. As someone passionate about health and fitness, creating a gamified fitness app felt exciting and meaningful. I truly believe that Stride is the kind of app that I—and many others—need in our lives to improve overall health and encourage better self-care. This project reinforced the importance of balancing speed with attention to detail and highlighted the value of a strong design system in delivering a cohesive user experience. Stride embodies my passion for design and my vision for what fitness apps can be—functional and engaging.
Chelsey Bodenham
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