Project timeline: Jan 23 - April 18, 2024 Project Name: “TAMU Rec Sports App Redesigned ”
Student Recreational Center (Building)
Prof. Bruner’s Guidance in Design Innovation
The previous TAMU Rec Sports app received complaints for low usability. Although it hosted a wealth of information, much of the content was lost to users because the discovery of said information was difficult, akin to navigating a large-scale blog.
The new design focuses on prioritizing the information that will be demanded most by users. For example, the scan-in function is accessible in a high-contrast, circular button on the app’s dashboard. The hours of each gym are also immediately visible.
Users of the antiquated TAMU Rec Sports app gave it low and average ratings for aesthetic appeal. The existing design may overwhelm users by presenting a high amount of information with low visual interest.
The redesigned TAMU Rec Sports app incorporates modern design trends common among fitness apps, such as rankings, circular progress indicators, and geometric lists, while maintaining branding characteristics representative of Texas A&M.
The previous app lacked interactivity, engagement, and community. Most people were either unaware an app existed or chose not to use the app because of their negative experience.
The improved design emphasizes the importance of connectivity and enhances overall user engagement through a gamified UI/ UX. Our team created competitive modes, gym buddies, groups, and goals to enhance their gym experience.
Our redesign of the Rec Sports app is a prototype that can be further enhanced for real-world deployment. This process may look like further user testing through surveys and interviews, more prototype iterations, and acquiring developers to produce the design as a usable application.
Our ideation process for the target audience involved each team member proposing ideas followed by a vote. Each member of the group had a set number of votes to “spend” on different ideas. Our final decision was to focus on users of TAMU recreational centers.
Gym users need access to information on fitness class availabilities/schedules/options because the information is not available online and they are frustrated about an inconvenient sign-up process.
Most common pain points:
Different observed groups:
Variations between group pain points:
User personas were generating by presenting ChatGPT with a request to generate a user, labeling the user with numbers from 1 to 10 describing different personality traits relevant to our persona research. For example, a persona might be an 8 on the introvert to extrovert scale and a 6 on the busy to time-rich scale. To provide variety between our personas, we created some personas who attend the gym frequently and some who attend inconsistently.