Flex A.I.
The Flex Fitness app has not officially launched yet and as such I am only able to share limited details on mockups, examples, and process.
Flex AI is an early stage startup that is aiming to revolutionize the fitness app industry through integrating artificial intelligence and unique design. The app gives users ranging from beginner to advanced, workout plans that can help achieve their fitness goals. Apart from giving users pre-made plans, the app allows the creation of custom plans as well. In addition to the phone app, there is an Apple Watch app in development also. The app helps users progress through their plans via guided workouts and automating progression. Below you will find details on the projects I worked on during my time at Flex AI.
For latest updates visit: Flex AI
I had the privilege of joining Flex AI in its early stages and was involved with the design from the beginning. This was an amazing opportunity as it gave me experience and insight into the complete design process and taking an app from idea through development and then to beta launch. During my time at Flex AI I was part of a team of two designers and we worked together to create the design philosophy and direction of the app. I was involved with all stages including product/feature design, information architecture, wire-framing, case studies, user research, UI mockups and data analytics.
When I started at Flex AI, I helped implement an agile process and the use of Azure DevOps to track tasks, sprints, features and code repos. This helped to align the various teams and help organize features through the proper design, development and test processes.
Due to my background in software engineering, I worked closely with the back-end and iOS development teams ensuring that design and engineering are on the same page through detailed architectural documents and diagrams.
In addition to working on Android and iOS designs, I took lead on designing the Apple Watch app. This was a unique and challenging experience as this was the first time I was designing something for a small screen. This experience helped me grow as a designer quite a bit, since the constraints of designing for a wearable and a small screen were quite different than what I was used to, designing for mobile apps and the web.
Aside from UX design, I took part in many other initiatives on the team such as establishing a process for data analytics and defining metrics that we need to track to get insight into our app especially when we decided to launch to Alpha users. Also, I helped to come up with a bug tracking process so developers can properly manage any issues that came up.
While at Flex AI, we followed an agile process for the design and development of new features. Overtime we continuously improved and tweaked this process to better complement our team structure. For some features we also utilized the Google Design Sprint method and this proved to be quite successful when it came to rapid prototyping and testing the feasibility of certain features. I was responsible for creating and conducting the user research studies and analyzing the results for design improvements.
We followed a user centred design approach for any new features that went through the process. As a team, we spent time defining who our target user group is and creating personas to ensure we don’t lose site of our user. This approach helped us quite a bit when discussing new features and helped us to prioritize the feature list.
When I took lead on the Apple Watch app design, I followed a research first approach as it was a new medium for me to work on. Especially with the smaller screen size, I wanted to determine what the best practices were in designing for Apple Watch. I paid close attention to Apple apps since I knew they were following best practices. After this I created case studies on other fitness apps as well as using my Apple Watch at the gym regularly to figure out how best to design our product. This process proved to be helpful and aided in the creation of wireframes which were next in the process. At the wireframe stage we iterated quite a bit with the whole team to determine the best approach. After the completion of the wireframes I created detailed UI mockups which were then handed off to the iOS developers.
My experience at Flex AI was one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had as a designer and is one where I grew the most. Working for an early stage startup presented unique and interesting challenges, and being involved with the company from its early stages to launch taught me many lessons.
- There is no one design process that works, for every situation and circumstance, the design process can be tweaked to suit team dynamics and the product at hand.
- Thinking about the target user group early in the design process is beneficial. This is something that we considered later in the design process and caused some changes to the product which would’ve been determined earlier if we had defined our target users sooner.
- Test and iterate as much as possible and be open to change especially when designing for the user. Following the agile process really helped us maintain this mentality and allowed our design to be fluid and iterative leading us to a product we were most satisfied with.
- Establishing a good data analytics process is important when preparing for launch as user data can greatly help improve the app from a UX perspective after launch.
- Empathy is the most important aspect of human-centred design.
