Fitter with Friends

Peloton Interactive, Inc. is an American exercise equipment and media company based in New York City. Peloton's main products are Internet-connected stationary bicycles and treadmills that enable monthly subscribers to remotely participate in classes via streaming media.

Our challenge for this project is to create a product within the company of our choice. We decided to pick Peloton due to its rising reputation in the early stage of pandemic; considering that people who usually works out outdoors/at the gym, have to change their habits indoors and Peloton was able to provide the absence of being a part of a community into its product. Since Peloton is still very young for a company, we believe that they have a huge amount of potential and growth.

Our team consists of six people and we divide our work into roles including researcher, designer and prototyper. As a leader of this team, I led our work flow from start to finish and divided our process into 4 phases:

• Research (5 days): Initial research done by two of my teammates
• Design (10 days): User flow, wireframing and UI design
• Prototype (5 days): Creating interactive prototype based on UI design
• User testing (3 days): Asking respondents similar to our target market to ask for feedback

Research

We researched what users are currently facing when they're using Peloton bikes and what they hope Peloton can provide in the future. We also conducted research to make sure that we know what kinds of products we can bring into the table.

In this project, we took a goal-directed design approach that proved to be quite effective in our design efforts. We found qualitative research methods to be the most useful, consisting of a kickoff meeting, literature review, competitive analysis, and most important our persona hypothesis construction. We started out by asking ourselves some initial key questions.

"Why does community and social connectivity matter to Peloton?"

"Who are Peloton's competitor?"

"What do our primary users need most?"

"How can we motivate users to use Peloton?"

"What challenges could we face moving forward?"

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About Peloton

Peloton was founded in 2012, aiming to create an exercise equipment and media company in America. Their main products are stationary bicycles and treadmills and their main services are on-demand fitness classes and subscription. As of Q2 2021, they are valued at 48 billion USD with 4.4 million market capitalization.

Peloton has the largest interactive fitness platform in the world with a loyal community. They provide an application that allows its users to enjoy interactive fitness through workout videos equipped with virtual fitness instructors, personalized trainings, and music selections at the comfort of their own homes.

Peloton's Competitors

Based on our research, we created a thorough competitor analysis for Peloton.

Peloton's Target Market

We defined Peloton's current market along their backgrounds and habits:

• Users under 35 with a household income of under $75,000
• Users are predominantly living in urban areas
• Existing customers to high-end gym memberships (Equinox)
• Work out to a regular weekly routine
• Requires variations to workout style to remain motivated

Based on the traits above, we created two user personas.

Our Solution

Peloton's CEO noted how important it is to have a community and social connectivity included with the Peloton experience, and he wants to provide users with more ways to establish and maintain those connections. We also addressed other reasons why it is important for sports equipment industry to be able to provide a sense of community and have social connectivity:

• Encouragement from peers is a great motivation.
• Meeting friends and new acquaintances while working out are ways to socialize without have to meet in person.
• Peloton is known for immersive, socially motivating fitness experiences, owing its success to social connections.
  

Peloton by itself has added a social integration feature where users can add friends via facebook and their Peloton account. However, being friends on Peloton don’t mean much to users because there are no collaborative features available. Users desire a competitive environment in which they share and accomplish goals with friends.

After careful consideration and lots of brainstorming together, we concluded some features that we would like to add to Peloton:

• Focus on added measures to privacy
• Groups and channels
• New ways to stay engaged and explore‍
  

Design

User Flow

In this project, we defined Peloton's current user flow and revised the flow based on our proposed products. Below is Peloton's current flow when users interact with the bike.

We constructed a user flow of what a basic start to finish journey looks. This helps us in understanding ways users can interact with the product, as well as allowing us to see navigation through user goals. We have added some features including groups and channels.

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Sketch

We started off our design process with sketching. Through this stage, we know better what our app would look like based on the user flow.

Inspirations

We also added some interface inspirations from existing products who are offering similar to what we proposed. (ZSwift for the exploring option and Clubhouse for the channels and chats with friends)

Wireframe

We turned our sketches into low fidelity wireframes. We reviewed what was necessary and what areas needed improvement. We poured a lot of our time into this step to make sure we had the finishing touches on the underlying UX before moving onto the visuals.

Final Design

Workout Groups

Workout groups and channels added to incorporate social networking into workouts and to encourage and motivate the users to exercise regularly

Workout Schedule

Workout schedule shows individual workout plans as well as regular group exercises. This reminds users that exercising is an ongoing journey and a part of their daily routines.

Prototype & User Testing

We prototyped the app, and user tested it to make sure that the app is easy to use for the users. We also fixes the app based on the feedback we received from our respondents.

Feedback Based On User Testing

1. 87.5% of the survey participants have rated 7 or higher on the new features’ impact on the product.
2. 91.7% have rated 7 or higher on their probability on joining Peloton with the new social feature.
3. 100% have rated positively on the landing and navigating experience of the prototype.

What are we going to do next?

Since this project is mainly for educational purposes, we hope to inspire other researchers, designers, and fellow readers with our case study. Also, we hope to continue solidify our technical skills by doing more case studies, design sprints and prototypes.