Exlib review

URL: http://www.exlib.no/

Date visited: 04/01/08

Target audience:
Gym users, amateur and professional athletes, bodybuilders

Website goal:
Offer exercise library and fitness manager online and on PDA

Technology used:
Flex, Flash, HTML, Flash Video, Flash Mobile

Design:
Website: Simple, non-attractive design. Yellow is main colour on white and grey background. Icons used throughout the site aren’t intuitive.
PDA: clean design, space savy that takes advantage of the pda tap-screen, with good use of fonts and drop down/pop-out menus. Navigation between menu isn’t clear, there is for example no back buttons on menus and labels not always clear.

Navigation:
Website:
Main_nav : Tab
-Diary
-Programs
-Reports
-Library
Sub _nav: Accordion available on Dairy only. Each section opens as pop-up
Injuries
Supplement
Notes
Program pop-up opens on program tab
PDA:
Navigation isn’t always clear, and too complex. Two button add exercise are confusing. Some of the button aren’t clear. No back button

User experience feedback:
Library free to consult but other features only available to paid customers who
require login. Hierarchy of navigation isn’t clear which is the same problem with the PDA functionality.

Interesting Features:
The library comprise videos showing exercise and stretching, showing muscles involved
Information stored on the PDA synchronizes with ExLib Online when in docked mode (requires account with Exlib).
Selling point with video showing Exlib for PDA.

Comments:
The paying feature is a major drawback.
The PDA functionality is very interesting but need more hierarchy, isn’t easy to setup , should have a dedicated help page on the website.
Overall, the application on PDA is easy to use but isn’t suitable for my target audience. It is too detailed. Use of colours to distinguish between diary and library.
This app gives me an idea: myfitnessguru could be exended in the future to a myfitnessguru “pro” with more specific features catering for a more professional athlete audience.

guidelines to review websites

I will use the following criteria to review the different websites during my research.

URL:
Date visited:
Target audience:
Website goal:
Technology used:
Design:
Navigation:
User experience feedback:
Interesting Features:
Comments:

Survey url

The fitness survey is available at the following url:

http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=c0d5ce1f-8214-40a0-9974-8c17918b122d&cid=03ec82a9-c3e8-4f1f-b077-6537bb7d303f 

Survey planning

I will do the following
1.Send short panel list to pretest the survey
2.Email panel for feedback
3.Revise survey to incorporate feedbacks
4.Send to enlarged list , with friends/family/colleagues to target participants
include:
short invitation
Personalised email invitation
Privacy statement to mention confidential and “uni project”.
5.Send reminder email to people who haven’t declined survey offer
6.Publish result online to participants

Defining Target Audience

I realized the necessity to connect with the audience I want to sell my concept website to.
To be familiar with their needs and preferences to then promote the aspects of the websites that will be most relevant to them.
By definition, a target audience is “A group of individuals that constitute a set of possible buyers for a given product or service.”
I need to define the target audience in a way that provide useful information to build the website.
For that I will design a short survey to forward to people that might be interested in myfitnessguru.com
Besides, I will get feedback from polarfitnesstrainer and wellness website users
Ask feedback from gym instructors, gym users.
From all these sources, I will draw a description of my target audiences, making them as specific as possible and decide what is the primary objective with each of them.
The idea is to be able to answer the following questions:

* Who are my best or most profitable potential clients?
* Which group of customers makes up the bulk of my business?
* What do all these customers have in common?

Schedule

Following feedback from presentation and proposal I will rework the schedule of my project and detail it. I will post it on this blog.

research materials: books and tutorials

As part of my research, I will look at the following materials:
tutorial:
ActionScript 3.0 in Flex Builder Essential Training
ActionScript 3.0 in Flash CS3 Essential Training

Flex 2 Essential Training
Flex 2 Beyond the Basics

Books:

Interesting similar concept: PolarPersonalTrainer

PolarpersonalTrainer.com

I had a look at this website. It is a good example of user experience I would like to be able to produce for this project, at least on building the User Interface, building the same functionalities is beyond the scope of my project. From my knowledge I believe the website was probably built using both Adobe Flex and Flash. I will therefore look at these two programs.

I will review the site and give some feedback in a later post.

Incentive to the website

I had some feedback regarding the why ? for the project. The question was :”why should I sign up to myfitnessguru.org?”.
I understood there that the fact that it is free has to be marketed properly, so that people can take full advantage of the technology available. Also, there was a motivation factor attached to it. Even if it is free, some people will still be reluctant to sign up. Take the example of someone who wants to loose weight, tried many diets, but can motivate him/herself to go to the gym. To reach this target audience I need to introduce an incentive scheme, where the person gets rewarded for its comittment to improving their heath and fitness. they could for example put their own incentive there, or earn points that would allow them to buy or do something with it.

I was reading this book ” Psychological change” which has a nice introduction on behaviourist psychology.

It mentions that with self-change plans, like the one I m trying to put together with myfitnessguru.org, several difficulties can arise. It mentions 4 of them

1. a Lack of willpower
2. Problem with recording
3. Problem in Identifying behaviour
4. Problems identifying rewarding consequences

The lack of willpower may be the first difficulty someone may encounter to use self-help change tools like myfitnessguru.org. this would likely be the case if the person has failed in self-change effort in the past. because of the link between motives and reward means if I do install step of reward that can motivate this category of people to sign up and/or follow and stick to the program.

There is also a problem with recording info, if people have to record their workout log, that would pose a pb for people who will find it difficult to keep track of their exercises. fluctuation may occur as well.

the book mention the following statement:”Many self-change programs are given up prematurely because of a failure to collect enough information and to collect it accurately. “

I should pay close attention to make myfitnessguru

-easy to collect information when exercising
-make it simple enough to avoid too many mistake.

-establish a frequency of reward

Also it is important for the website to help people identify the change they need to improve their health/fitness. A introduction survey covering their health and habits be for they save their profile might be helpful in identifying and categorizing behaviors.

Idea on the Logo

This is a preliminary idea on the Logo. It would be interesting to use similar colors to red and blue.