CASE STUDY

Exos Fit

Product Design, Design Leadership, Product Strategy

UX DIRECTOR — Peter Knocke
UX DESIGNER — CRYSTAL DAVIDSON
LEAD DEVELOPER — Cara Warner
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT — Jason Goodhand


Context

Exos is a pioneer in human performance, bringing together an integrated cognitive and physical approach to increase performance for athletes. Now extending their coaching to corporate wellness and fitness centers at Fortune 100 Companies to executive board rooms, Exos coaches help people accomplish their most meaningful goals.

Challenge

In 2020, as offices, gyms, and fitness studios closed their doors, corporations sought ways to continue providing health and wellness benefits to their employees. The team at Exos needed to quickly scope, design, and deliver a platform for Exos coaches to continue training in this new environment of remote work.

Mapping out the initial breadth of experience

To begin the project, the team needed to understand the full breadth of experience the Exos Fit platform should provide. Features such as coach Booking, class scheduling, and video consultations were available but provided a variety of impact upon production needs, operational modifications, technical costs, and user impact. The team spent ample time mapping the content to integrate across recorded classes, live classes, and instructional videos.

As the team completed the content and feature analysis, we decided to prioritize content selection at the highest level of application information architecture. This structure allowed users to dive directly into their desired content type at the beginning of the experience.

 

What does a fitness center in your home look like?

Not only was this the first time that many customers were going to try to move their fitness regimen to home, but it was also the first time the highly-trained Exos coaches were going to instruct and record their classes at home. We surveyed the initial cohort of coaches to discover challenges connected to coaching at home. We uncovered many physical, audible, lighting, and technological obstacles awaiting these coaches.

This survey helped us empathize with the upcoming challenges for the coaches while also understanding their passion for providing top-tier instruction no matter what. We were able to start building our initial feature list for the Coach Hub portion of the experience as we recognized many pieces of core functionality required for coaches to be able to facilitate at home.



Understanding coach touchpoints 

Another key insight from the coaches was how critical random interactions at the fitness center were to their coaching practice. Little conversations like pointing out errors in form or asking about weekend plans lead to more in-depth discussions between coach and member. These discussion often helped deepen the relationship and improved mutual respect. Within the new at-home context, we needed to imitate these interactions in a natural and positive way.

We created interaction timelines to envision where notifications, class reminders, planned coach interactions, and suggested activites would help or hinder the members expereince. These timelines aided further adjustments to the coaches workflows to reduce unnessecary interruptions before they happened.




Determining interaction models for a hybrid future

The team knew the fitness centers would reopen and the Exos Fit platform would need to facilitate a hybrid world. The clear communication and differentation of features and content for each context of remote, physical, or hybrid because a top priority.

We utilized block diagrams to map mulitple interaction models to disucss and debate which option would be the most understandable to members. No one is happy when they show up to a locked fitness center.

  
  

Balancing self-directed vs coach-engaged

As we shared prototypes with users, we heard of two main modes of interaction. Certain members had a specific plan, solid fitness knowledge, and wanted to interact with their desired content as soon as possible. Other members were unable to plan their workout, uncertain of their capabilites, and leaned on coaches to stay accountable. We coined these two modes as self-directed and coach-engaged. Discussing these modes allowed us to refine the launch application to accommodate to both sets of users.

We adjusted the promient 'My Activity' section to collect queued lessions and activities for the self-directed users. For the coach-engaged members, the coaches gained the ability to populate specific elements into the section to provided their members much needed daily guidance.

    

    


Quickly adapting to a desktop UI

Our interface library utilized versitle activity and class cards arranged by filterable lists. We adjusted and scaled these cards to quickly develop the desktop UI. As members began using the application, we realized many used the desktop UI to best connect to the devices or televisions available in their workout space. This insight lead us to priorize AirPlay and Chromecast functionality.

 

Outcome

Exos Fit successfully brought the rich insights, personality, and methodology of professional Exos coaching to employees across America. The platform facilitated positive Health and Wellness outcomes for the hundreds of thousands of employees with access.

  • Generated millions in first year revenue and a 2.5x increase in second year revenue
  • Exos Fit used by many Fortune 100 companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Intel, Pfizer, PepsiCo, and American Airlines
  • Digital coaching products generated 3x the margin of the company's other businesses