Gal
A website FOR COLLEGE WOMEN learning how to lift weights
Client
Interaction Design I: Responsive
Skills
UI/UX, Product design, Visual design, Branding, Illustration, Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Role
Researcher, Designer
Timeline
12 Weeks, Fall 2022
Females Are Hesitant to Start Lifting
As the culminating project of Northeastern’s Interaction Design I: Responsive class, I designed a responsive web interface addressing an issue of my choice.
Having started my own lifting journey over the summer, I discovered that many of my female friends were hesitant towards strength training despite it being a potential useful tool in helping them achieve their fitness goals.
Conducting User Research
Through developing personas and interviewing female students interested in lifting, I found that this could be attributed to three pain points:
The learning curve surrounding learning proper form and equipment
Stigmas associated with gymming (ex: gym bros)
A lack of an accountable gym partner
In addition, upon further benchmarking of other fitness websites, it became clear that there are a lack of online resources supporting women in the areas of lifting community and education.
Personas
Benchmarking, user workflows, and interview findings
To address the issues brought up during research, I centered my website around three primary workflows:
Creating workout routines
Learning specific exercises
Fostering community
With this, I began to construct user flows through developing sitemaps and low-fidelity wireframes before moving on to hi-fis.
Sitemaps and Wireframes
Crafting a Visual Design System
To make the site inviting to beginners, a quality I felt the other benchmarked sites lacked, I incorporated a gradient color palette and rounded typography through components, hand-drawn illustrations, and UI elements.
What I Learned
The drawbacks of over-designing
While I had a blast learning about components and variables– to the point where I went a little overboard in prototyping my screens– my time could have been redirected to developing more extensive user flows or screens.
Pushing my limits informs me what I can scale back on and what aspects of design to prioritize in the future.
Painting with a broad brush
Instead of approaching interface design component by component, sketch with rough wireframes and flows first before diving into hi-fis.
Good user research makes all the difference
I initially planned for Gal to cover two aspects of fitness: nutrition and lifting. However, after interviewing my target audience, I discovered it was best to lead with Gal as a lifting resource.
This was because students already had a system for food intake in place and were more apt to change their eating habits if they learned the basics and benefits of strength training first.
Without this bit of user feedback, I would have lost time incorporating the two topics when one alone would've been more effective.
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Designed with <3 by Olivia Wang