Design and evaluation of a mobile fitness application to encourage people in physical activity

Mobile fitness applications have seen a significant growth to promote more active lifestyles by following different approaches. However, it is yet unclear which design strategies and methodologies provide the best results when it comes to keep people motivated in their workouts. The main objective of this study was to determine what motivational factors engage people to use fitness and wellbeing mobile applications. For this purpose, a mobile application was designed for the company SportyFly Oy. SportyPlanner app is a mobile application that allows users to follow up exercise programs and to easily communicate with their personal trainers. In order to determine whether the application would motivate its users as well as the user experience provided, an evaluation with 16 participants was performed. In addition, an evaluation of the design strategies used in the design of SportyPlanner app was made. Therefore, the final product served as a mean to validate what design strategies are more suitable to increase user’s physical activity and motivation. The most important findings regarding motivation were that having the support of a personal trainer is an essential feature to be included and that promoting sociability and the creation of users’ communities is very motivating in the long term. Also, providing an extrinsic motivation in the form of rewarding the user turned out to be a good motivational tactic. As for the usability, the intuitiveness and ease of use of the app as well as the visual design were features highly appreciated by the participants