Project summary
MOTIV is an established health-tracking platform used by families and friend groups to view each other’s fitness activity. While users enjoyed monitoring progress, engagement dropped significantly after the first 2–3 weeks because the app lacked a way to communicate, celebrate, or motivate each other.
Duration : 5 months
Team: Independent
Project Type: Mentor Led Project
Role: User Experience Designer
Challenge
Create a messaging experience that increases retention, motivation, and repeat usage without disrupting existing fitness flows.
MOTIV had strong early engagement, but users consistently dropped off after 2–3 weeks. While the app allowed people to track fitness progress and view what friends were doing, it lacked one major element: communication. Users couldn’t celebrate achievements, encourage each other, or stay accountable as a group. The challenge was to introduce messaging in a way that felt natural, seamless, and genuinely motivating, without disrupting the existing experience
Solution
SEE THE FULL PROTOTYPE
Define
In this phase, the focus was on translating research and interview findings into a clear understanding of the core engagement problem. Users consistently shared that they lose momentum after the first few weeks because the app doesn’t provide meaningful social reinforcement or timely motivation. By organizing these insights through affinity mapping, patterns such as accountability gaps, lack of recognition, and the need for effortless encouragement became clear.
Affinity Map
I explored eight variations of how the artwork information screen could present information - testing different layouts and interactions that feel natural inside a museum.
Insights from the interviews were recorded and organized into clusters to identify recurring patterns and themes reflecting readers’ shared challenges and motivations.
Persona
Ideate
With a clear understanding of user pain points and drop-off patterns, the ideation phase focused on designing messaging experiences that would feel natural, motivating, and seamlessly integrated into users’ everyday fitness routines. Early sketches and user flows explored how MOTIV could combine social accountability, quick reactions, and achievement-based messaging into a single, cohesive experience. We mapped out flows for celebrating goals, reacting to friends’ progress, sharing milestones with groups, and starting conversations directly from activity screens.
User Flow
Design
The design phase focused on translating insights and user flows into a clean, motivating, and socially connected fitness experience. Because MOTIV’s users value simplicity, emotional encouragement, and quick interactions, the visuals and layout were intentionally minimal, friendly, and easy to navigate.
Low Fedility
I began with low-fidelity sketches to explore different ways messaging could live within progress screens not as a separate feature, but as a natural extension of users’ fitness activity. This allowed me to test how quickly users could access reactions, send messages, or share achievements without breaking their flow.
Style Guide
High Fedility
After refining the low-fidelity prototype the design was brought into high-fidelity to express MOTIV’s energetic and supportive brand personality. The hi-fi screens focused on clean visuals, bold colors, and clear typography that make progress feel motivating and messaging feel effortless. Contextual messaging options, quick reactions, and achievement-sharing were polished to blend naturally into activity screens. Subtle animations and confirmations were added to reinforce small wins and keep the experience fun, social, and engaging.
Test
The goal of this phase was to test the design with real users and refine it based on their feedback. Two rounds of usability testing highlighted early issues with icon clarity, message placement, and how users discovered sharing options. After iterating on these areas, the second round showed noticeably smoother navigation, clearer pathways to messaging, and stronger engagement with features like quick reactions and achievement sharing. These improvements confirmed that contextual, lightweight communication successfully enhanced the overall experience.
Iterate
During second usability testing, no major redesigns were required. The core flows - viewing progress, sharing achievements, and messaging friends, were intuitive for all participants, which confirmed that the foundation of the design was strong.
Feedback mainly focused on small refinements rather than functional issues, such as adjusting the placement of a tab for easier reach, improving icon clarity, and tightening a few UI elements for visual consistency. These light-touch adjustments enhanced usability without altering the overall structure.
Overall, the testing validated that the design direction was working well, and only minor polish was needed to create a smoother, more cohesive experience.
Final Result
Reflection
Designing MOTIV highlighted how important social connection is in sustaining healthy habits. While the app already offered strong activity tracking, integrating messaging features revealed how motivation grows when users feel seen, supported, and encouraged by people they trust. Through two rounds of testing, I learned that even small UI decisions, such as icon placement or micro-interactions can influence how confident and motivated users feel when navigating a fitness app.
This project reaffirmed the value of testing early and often: even when no major redesigns were needed, hearing real users interpret the interface provided clarity, direction, and validation for design decisions.
Next Step
Going forward, several opportunities can further strengthen MOTIV's social ecosystem:
Introduce lightweight group challenges for families and friends to boost ongoing participation.
Conduct long-term engagement testing to study whether messaging truly increases retention over several weeks.
These next steps aim to deepen MOTIV’s core mission: transforming fitness tracking from a solo experience into a supportive, motivating, and community-driven journey.