7 Workout App

The good bits:

  • The starting state of the app offers a focused setup flow for setting up one’s workout plan, without spiralling into too many steps or details. The structure progressives from broad workout goals to setting a daily reminder to work out.
  • The app offers two layers of a “free sample”: newcomers can use the app without an account, and they can also sign up for a free trial of its membership plan for a limited time. This gives a newcomer plenty of flexibility to figure out how to use the app in the best way for their personal needs.
  • The app distributes prompts for different onboarding actions across the app, having many of them appear at meaningfully relevant times or in meaningful places. This contextual approach is much friendlier than asking for these all up front.

To be improved:

  • Some conceptual terms aren’t introduced before they start getting used in the app. For example, new users will see a prompt to sign up for a free trial, and a separate prompt to sign up for an account. The two different uses of the signup concept could create confusion in a new user who may wonder what the relationship between these two things are. Similarly, the app’s workout rewards system isn’t well clarified, for example, it’s not clear what’s meant by “earning instructors.”

The home screen of the app shows a feed of different workout options, emphasising a recommended “Plan” based on what the user put in during initial setup, but also offering an entry point to “Freestyle” workouts. There are also inline prompts that reinforce actions that may have been skipped at first run, such as setting reminders.

The empty states of other tabs are populated with relevant and actionable content. Some concepts are a bit confusing, however. It’s unclear what the concept of “earning instructors” means in the context of the Library tab, since it sounds like you might be earning a human being. An introduction to this rewards system concept might be helpful. Similarly, on the Activity and Profile tabs, the concepts of signing up to save your workouts and signing up for a free trial of the subscription are being conflated. A new user who had already signed up for the free trial could be confused by seeing another prompt to sign up…for a profile.

An overview of the exercises that will be included in each workout is a good way to set expectations for new and existing users alike. Additionally helpful are the first workout’s post-workout screens, which give the user a recap of the workout, an opportunity to rate their workout’s difficulty, and next steps.

The app also weaves other onboarding prompts into contextually relevant locations or at contextually relevant moments across the app. For example, the prompt to enable notification access only appears if the user decides to enable workout reminders.