PURPOSE

I was invited to interview for a design position at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Although I was not selected to join their team, it was an amazing experience to put together a design exercise for my presentation. I was asked to come up with a digital solution to help entice people to exercise.

My design topic is a mobile app that lets users agree to join a public digital leaderboard within a fitness class. This is to generate friendly competition and gamify the exercise within the fitness class, as well as help each rider to monitor their progress. 

STRATEGY

Spin classes have been a rising exercising option among Millennials as they’re perceived to be fun and full of energy within the class. However, these spin classes can be intimidating, as people often don’t know each other and/or feel intimidated to work out in front of other people, especially newcomers comparing themselves to regular attendees.

Often classes don’t help track your progress and rely on your own devices such as Fitbit or Apple Watch. Without those devices, your exercise progress stats can be lost, and is hard for people to keep track of how they have improved or what needs to be worked on.

IDEA

As mobile phones are a huge part of Millennials’ everyday life from connecting with other people to keeping track of personal data and utility. The idea is to create a mobile app that lets users join a digital leaderboard within the spin class, and the app will keep track of the bike’s information such as speed, time, and the rider’s biometrics in private.

The digital leaderboard will showcase the rider as an avatar (can choose to be anonymous) riding alongside other avatars in a gamified setting. An instructor will be there in the class to help guide the movements.

This will help the riders in the class clearly visualize the “mountains” they’re riding up on, as well as see how their avatar is performing. The gamification aspect can help riders focus on their riding and also generate a friendly competition game among other riders while being able to monitor the progress during and after.

HOW IT WORKS

I am using an example of a spin class called Smart Cycle. Each bike will be synced to a central digital screen that displays a leaderboard. Students of the spin class would need to download the mobile app to connect to the bike they’re riding and create an identity to be part of the leaderboard which they can choose to be anonymous as well.