Health Category
Fitly App
Fitly - Your Personalized Path to Reaching Your Weight and Wellness Goals!
An intuitive calorie and fitness tracker designed to help users reach their weight and health goals through personalized guidance, easy logging, and motivational support.
Problem
Despite the availability of fitness and calorie-counting apps, many users still face some challenges:
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Users, especially beginners, often find apps overloaded and complicated, leading to app abandonment.
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Logging food manually can be time-consuming, and without quick-entry features, users lose interest.
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Many apps fail to provide a personalized experience aligned with users’ specific goals and habits.
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Some apps treat diet, exercise, and goal tracking as separate silos, making it harder for users to see the full picture of their health journey.
Goal
The goal is to create a user-friendly, and personalized calorie and fitness tracking app that supports users in achieving their health goals, such as losing weight, maintaining, or gaining muscle via simple and holistic support.
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Simplify the experience of calorie tracking.
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Integrate nutrition, exercise, healthy habits and progress.
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Provide a personalized approach to each user’s needs.
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Offer motivational tools and guidance.
Solution
Addressing users' common struggles with complexity, motivation, and lack of personalization, Fitly was created as a simple, goal-focused health companion that combines calorie tracking, exercise logging, and personalized guidance.
1
Onboarding with Goal Setting:
Users input their weight goal and Fitly calculates their daily calorie target.
2
Daily Calorie Tracker:
Track calories consumed across different meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks). Easy logging with suggestions and saved favorites.
3
Progress Overview Dashboard:
Calorie balance (eaten, burned, left), weight changes, personal habits, and achievements.
4
Healthy Habits Tracking:
Add goals for different healthy habits and track progress.
5
Exercise and Activities Logging:
Add workouts or steps to see how many calories have been burned.
6
Exploration Section:
Discover meal ideas, healthy recipes, and curated food plans aligned with the user’s fitness goals (e.g., keto, vegetarian, high protein).
7
Reminders and Congratulations:
Personalized reminders for meals, hydration, and workouts, as well as encouragement based on progress.
8
Integration with Apps:
Sync with wearables (like Health, Apple Watch) for automatic tracking.
Welcome To Explore Prototype
Designer's Role
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UX researcher
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UX designer
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UI designer
Key App Features
1. Onboarding with Personal Goal Setting
Problem:
'As a user, I feel worried when starting a new calorie app and unsure about how to set the right goal and start my journey.'
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Feature solution:
Users are guided through a simple onboarding flow where they define their goal (e.g., lose weight, gain muscle), and get a personalized daily calorie recommendation.
2. Daily Calorie Tracker
Problem:
'As a user, I find calorie tracking time-consuming and confusing, especially when logging meals throughout the day.'
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Feature Solution:
Users can easily log meals across breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks with smart suggestions, quick-add features, and a saved food library that makes daily tracking fast and intuitive.
3. Progress Dashboard & Goals Set Up
Problem:
'As a user, I often don’t understand how my food and exercise entries impact my progress or if I’m staying on track.'
Feature Solution:
The dashboard provides a clear, real-time view of calories consumed, burned, and remaining, along with visual trends of weight changes and activity, helping users stay informed.
4. Quick Add
Problem:
'As a user, I find calorie and activity tracking time-consuming, especially when I'm in a rush. I appreciate quick and simple tools that save time.'
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Feature Solution:
Fitly introduces the ‘Plus’ button in the bottom navigation, a quick-access feature that lets users log meals, calories, activities, or habits in just two easy taps.
5. Exploration Section
Problem:
'As a user, I get bored with my meals and don’t know what to eat to stay on track with my goals.'
Feature Solution:
The Exploration section offers users curated recipes, meal plans, and diet programs aligned with their fitness goals, making healthy eating more inspiring and varied.
6. Setting and Tracking Habits
Problem:
'As a user, I struggle to build consistent healthy habits because I forget or don’t see my daily patterns.'
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Feature Solution:
Users can track habits like water intake, sleep, and steps, or create and track other individual habits. They receive reminders and gentle nudges to stay on track.
7. Smart Sync with Wearables
Problem:
'As a user, I find it difficult to manually log my daily activity and steps, and I'm not sure how much I’ve burned unless it’s tracked automatically.'
Feature solution:
Users can easily sync Fitly with Apple Health to automatically import steps and workouts. This makes it effortless to track calories burned without manual input.
Process
01.
Empathize
Competitive Research
User Interviews
Personas
HMW Problem Statements
02.
Define & Ideate
Informational Architecture
User Stories
User Flows
Sketches
Usability tests
Wireframes
Style Guide
High Fidelity Mockups
03.
Prototype & Test
Prototypes
Usability Tests
Iterations
Research Stage
Competitive Research
Research Design:
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Analyzed 5 fitness applications: Snap Calorie, MyFitnessPall, Lose it, Cronometer, Yazio
- Apple Health, Fitness wearables
Key takeaways:
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Onboarding often feels too long and overwhelming, with some irrilevant questions.
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Food logging is functional, but way too tedious, time-consuming and complicated.
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Most apps excel at data-heavy features like nutritional breakdowns and macro tracking. However, they often lack engagement, personalization, or motivational elements to keep users stay consistent long-term.
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Some app offer extended goal-setting during onboarding, but it's not easy to adjust or add goals later.
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Personalized healthy habit tracking is mostly missing in apps.
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There’s not enough tailoring for different user personas, such as beginners vs. advanced users.
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Recipes are not always available, or not aligned with users’ goals. There’s an opportunity in curated discovery and learning.
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While some apps use streaks or badges, these features are usually basic and impersonal.
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Often not clear what features are free and what not.
User Interviews
Research Design:
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4 Semi-Structured User Interviews, online/offline
- TA: 20-45 yo, female, diet/weight consious, use similar apps
Key Takeaways:​
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Many apps are too complicated, leading users to quit.
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Users would prefer to track their calories, activities in one place.
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Personalization is crucial, and users want the app to adjust to their needs (diets), goals, and knowledge level.
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The onboarding process is lengthy and feels irrelevant to users, often causing them to quit before completing it.
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Users struggle to understand how their progress is calculated, especially when it comes to the relationship between calories consumed and calories burned.
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Logging food is time-consuming and often difficult. For example, in Lose It!, it took some users a long time to figure out how to navigate the app.
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Picture-based food logging doesn’t always work well, it often fails to capture all food items correctly.
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Users dislike the lack of clarity between free and paid features, with many feeling frustrated when they discover features they thought were free require payment.
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Users appreciate seeing their progress and celebrate small wins.
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For some users, syncing with wearables like Apple Health and fitness trackers is crucial to centralize data.
User Personas
To design a product that truly resonates with users, I needed a clear, research-driven understanding of who I was designing for. Developing personas served as strategic touchpoints, turning insights into purposeful design actions. Each persona reflected a unique mindset, set of habits, and goals related to health and weight. These profiles helped me identify varying needs: from first-time calorie counters to experienced fitness enthusiasts, and shape solutions that spoke to their challenges.
HMW Problem Statements
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How might we help users set clear, personalized weight goals during onboarding, and easily update them throughout their journey?
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How might we make daily calorie tracking fast, intuitive, and effortless?
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How might we clearly visualize the connection between food intake, physical activity, and weight progress?
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How might we help users understand their progress and celebrate small wins along the way?
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How might we reduce time and effort when logging recurring meals and activities?
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How might we help users discover inspiring, goal-aligned meals and diet plans?
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How might we make healthy habit tracking feel personalized?
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How might we motivate users to stay consistent with their fitness and nutrition habits over time?
Informational Architecture
User Flows
User Flow: Diary Log
User Flow: Subscription
Wireframes
User Stories & Flows
Flow 1: As a user, I can quickly complete onboarding, clearly understand the app’s purpose, and easily set my weight or health goals.
Flow 2: As a user, I can quickly log meals using a voice input feature for faster entry.
Flow 3: As a user, I can easily search and find specific foods by typing keywords into the search field. I can either quickly add an item using the ‘Plus’ button or tap on a food to view its details, such as calories and macros, before adding it.
Flow 4: As a user, I can use the 'Plus' button to quickly add food, calories, habits, or activities in just a few clicks.
Flow 5: As a user, I can organize my food in folders like ‘My Food,’ ‘My Meals,’ and ‘My Recipes’ and easily copy food from previous days or saved entries.
Flow 6: As a user, I can quickly find and duplicate a meal.
Flow 7: As a user, when creating a new meal, I can quickly add items with the ‘Plus’ button or tap ingredients to view details before adding. I can also tap the ingredient counter in the top bar to see the full list with nutritional info.
Flow 8: As a user, I can browse curated recipe suggestions (e.g., low-carb, under 500 calories) and choose one to prepare.
Flow 9: As a user, I can create a recipe by quickly adding ingredients with the ‘Plus’ button or viewing details first. I can tap the counter to review all items and their nutrition, or add custom foods and calories if needed.
Flow 10: As a user, I can access my saved recipes, re-log them for any day or meal time or create a new recipe with ease.
Flow 11. As a User, I can log my food manually or just add calories, when needed
Flows 12 -13 - 14. As a user, I can view all my progress reports and key statistics in the Dashboard section. I can update or set personalized fitness and health goals in the Goals section. I create new habits to track in the Daily Habits section.
Flows 15. As a user, I can sync Fitly with Apple Health to automatically track my steps, workouts, and key health metrics, ensuring accurate progress monitoring.
UI Style Guidelines
Design Evolution
Low-Fidelity Prototype
High-Fidelity Prototype
Adaptation for Tablet
Usability Testing
Usability tests, Online, Semi-moderated Tests
TA: 30-45 yo, loosing weight females
Key Resuls and Improvements:
Imrovement 1: Diary Page
To reduce visual clutter and improve focus, collapsible arrows were added, allowing users to expand or hide individual sections of the Diary based on their needs.
Improvement 3: Recipe Page
To enhance navigation and personalize the experience, the Explore Recipes section was divided into two tabs: "Explore" and "Favorites." This allows users to easily browse new options while quickly accessing their favorite ones.
Improvement 2: Meal & Recipe Pages
A dynamic ingredient counter was added to the top navigation bar. It displays the number of ingredients added to a recipe or meal, allowing users to quickly track progress and access the ingredient list with a tap.
Improvement 4: Dairy Page
A quick-swipe gesture was introduced in the food list section. Users can now delete items by swiping left, making the process faster, more intuitive, and consistent with common app behaviors.
Conclusion
User research and testing confirmed that Fitly addresses a real and significant need: helping people achieve and sustain their weight and wellness goals. Participants consistently expressed how important it is for them to track calories, monitor progress, and maintain healthy habits, and Fitly makes this process simple and fast.
Users especially appreciated how intuitive it is to log foods, track calories, and view their overall progress. The structured yet flexible onboarding, combined with visual dashboards and personalized reminders, empowers users to stay in control of their diet and build consistency around their goals. While the current version has been well received (for food logging and calorie tracking), the next development priority is: to expand the exercise and activity features. A comprehensive library of workouts is now in development and scheduled for tests in July, enabling Fitly to support fitness routines as fully as
it supports nutrition.
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Overall, users are excited by how fast, simple, and goal-oriented Fitly feels, and the app is well-positioned to become an essential daily companion in their health journeys.