Let's Go Jim! | Devpost

1. Prototype link (Please submit a link to a playable prototype, not a link to your design file)

2. Describe your project (max 150 words)

Do you ever tell yourself you’re going to hit the gym, but it never ends up happening? Don’t worry, we’re in the same boat :( We decided to design “Let’s Go Jim” for undergraduates like us, aiming to motivate students to prioritize fitness and having fun while doing it! Through a user-friendly interface and personalized features, our app smoothly integrates with students' busy schedules, offering custom workout routines, interactive challenges, and digital rewards. We strive to achieve goals like releasing the intimidation of the gym, incorporating fun and friends, and tracking personal workout goals. Whether students are looking to reduce stress, boost energy levels, or simply be active, “Let’s Go Jim” presents all its users with their very own Jim, a cute gym rat that inspires them to stay motivated and achieve their fitness goals.

3. Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. If you conducted secondary research by pulling from online sources, please include a link to your sources. (Max 500 words)

Our research began with analyzing the prompt for key words and thinking through current problems we have as undergraduate students ourselves. Some ideas we had include an application to assist with budgeting, meal prepping, and housing search. We ultimately decided to center our project around encouraging students to go to the gym. Why? Because we believe that building the habit of maintaining a healthy body = sustaining a happy mind.

Through our research process, we completed competitive analysis to access the market for existing resources available to undergraduate students. We reviewed four applications to help us frame how we wanted to approach building our app for students. The link to our competitive analysis is here. We found that many of existing apps encourage people to workout from home with online videos and include workout plans people can follow. We kept those popular market strategies in mind as we tried to differentiate ourselves from that by including features users already enjoy while adding more.

In addition, we conducted a survey focused on gaining insight to how students felt about the gym and what features they would like to see in a gym focused app. Through this survey, we were able to collect 75 responses of undergraduate students. The link to our survey is here.

We noted that over 58% of survey takers don’t go to the gym because of laziness, and we definitely understand that. Gym-ing is difficult :’( In relation to that, 68% said that having to manage time and balance school, extracurriculars, etc. while consistently going to the gym adds to the difficulty. Over 72% said seeing results motivates them and 52% say that friends are their motivation to hit the gym.

Lastly, 77% of survey takers would like to see personalized workout plans with 72% enjoying exercise demonstrations. Additionally, 66% want to be able to track their progress with 54% wanting challenges and achievements within the app. With such high demand for varying features, we challenged ourselves to include as many features as we could while also prioritizing designing a user-friendly interface and limiting cognitive overload in mind.

4. Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words)

When we were making our design decision, we always went back to our three main goals of reducing intimidation, encouraging fun and friends, and tracking progress.

One of the first things that came to mind when brainstorming was the name of the app. This part is usually a struggle, but the name we chose, “Let’s Go Jim” came to us relatively quickly. We enjoyed the play on words of ‘let’s go gym’ which encourages students to gym but also have a second meaning when adding a comma, ‘let’s go, Jim” when students put themselves in the perspective of our avatar, Jim. When creating Jim’s world of gyming, we wanted to carry a playful and fun but encouraging stance. A lot of what stops people from gym-ing is intimidation so we believed this would be the first step to reduce that barrier.

Secondly, being able to include existing features users enjoyed while including a variety of new features took us for a road trip. In the end, we were able to categorize all the features we wanted to include into three categories. These three categories were also the three goals we had in mind when fulfilling the purpose of designing “Let’s Go Jim”.

Goals Reduce intimidation

Personalized workout plans
Exercise demonstrations
In person equipment information scanner

This section combats laziness and time management as our app does the research to the user’s workout preferences and generates helpful action items.

Encourage fun and friends

Challenge friends to race and ‘battle’ (Ex. Race your friend on screen by running on treadmill in person)
Win cute accessories for your avatar through challenges
Overall branding is very playful and fun and encourages working out
Input your availability to find gym buddies near you and coordinate schedules for the quarter
See your friends on the leaderboard for the week

This section lists the main motivation factors that encourage users to go to the gym. We include gamification and a social aspect to empower users.

Track progress

View your streak of gym-ing on your profile
View collection of accessories for your avatar on your profile
Learn more about yourself through questionnaires as you get more comfortable in the gym

This section is also a main motivation factor users enjoy. We also believe that being able to see your growth in tangible ways encourages users to continue and feel fulfilled.

Lastly, we decided to include fun elements like an avatar, gamification, and animation. This was our first time in this realm so it was a big part of our design decision. To truly immerse ourselves in the world of Jim, we wanted to draw him out along with multiple variations for users to choose their Jim. We also animated Jim to perform gym exercises to encourage our users to follow his lead. We found that having Jims interact with other Jims also allows users to really dive deep into the world of Jim that encourages gyming and fun!