Transforming a basic fitness app into a dynamic platform that tripled its user base in just one year.
MAXPRO, a Detroit-based fitness company, revolutionized home, office, outdoors and to-go workouts with its portable machine offering up to 300 lbs of resistance.
In order to elevate user experience we designed a intuitive, multi-functional mobile app that offers guided classes, freestyle workouts, detailed fitness analytics, social engagement and more, allowing the users to train smarter and achieve their fitness goals seamlessly.
• Tripled user base within a year.
• Increased user engagement and retention.
• Active users in over 50 countries.
UX Lead / Designer
- UX research and analysis
- Define strategic plans with stakeholders
- Led design team through design process
- Coach Jr designers
- Prepare and present prototypes
2020 - 2024
MAXPRO is a fitness company founded in Detroit, US, born from it's founder need to be able to workout from anywhere to fit he's travel-heavy lifestyle. That's when he invented the MAXPRO fitness device - a powerful, portable device delivering up to 300 lbs of resistance, redefining the fitness on the go.
This awesome device needed a digital platform to enhace a great on the go workout to a memorable workout experience.
You might think the above explanation it's unnecessary but I like to have in mind the original purpose of a product as a guide for basically everything I design. With that said, let's continue...
With the intention to create a immersive experience they created a first app version with a basic features and limited UX perspective since the team lacked from a UX designer.
- No dedicated home screen
- Simple list of exercises
- Basic timer
- Rough results screen
This was just a beginning of a bigger vision.
In the below image you can see the state of the app BEFORE I joined the project as a UX/UI Designer.
By 2020 due to the pandemic context (gyms closed and everybody at their homes), combined with the boost of wellness industry and having launched the first app versión, the company realized they needed to go harder and make a full investment on the app development.
Their business goals were clear:
- Reduce current users complains about the app.
- Increase number of users and retention.
- Position MAXPRO app as a reference on fitness industry.
MAXPRO app was about to migrate from IONIC to React Native while new brand features where planned to be added. To be able to do this the company expanded the team with more developers and me as a UX designer.
As a startup and it's agile development a had limited time to start delivering designs, my research was limited to online research and customer service team information from users, such as comments, complains, suggestions, questions, and more.
After UX research, we understood better the pain points of current users and how to relieve them as well as we understand better what the current fitness app industry offers, the standards, what users want and need to see, know and feel and what we needed to do to be at the level of world-wide fitness apps.
The image in the right shows how we categorized each insight in order to understand better how we were gonna to improve this app and if we needed to reinforce any aspect of the previous results.
After UX research, we understood better the users goals, desires and pain points, as well as what the current fitness app industry offers, the standards and what we needed to do to be at the level of world-wide fitness apps.
By mixing that knowledge with a user-centered approach, the project goals for re-creating MAXPRO's app were getting clear:
• Exercise easily
• See professional content
• Create custom workouts
• Be consistent
• See their progress
• Feel motivated
• Feel comfortable
• Reduce current users complains about the app.
• Increase number of users and retention.
• Position MAXPRO app as a reference on fitness industry.
• Define a work process strategy
• Design a well structured architecture
• Define a scalable design system
• Design having a user-centered mindset
We created an expansion plan to add new, valuable functionalities carefully designed to strategically meet the user and business goals.
- Attractive home screen to welcome users and show new, recommended and relevant content.
- Coached classes and lives to provide guided, structured workouts.
- Custom workout builder for personalized routines.
- Freestyle mode (Detroit Dash) for free creative workouts.
- Visually attractive workout screens, adaptable for amateurs and professional users.
- Detailed results screens to showcase progress with clarity.
- Live leaderboard to fuel friendly competition.
- Badges and awards to recognize achievements.
- Wellness section to support holistic health.
- Profile section to set up preferences.
Spoiler alert:
At some point a social feature was included, but I'll go deeper in that topic later.
According to our research, users have a set time for workouts and need a fast hassle-free way to start. Also they want to be able to know is that workout meets their interests before start. To meet these needs , we designed a simple flow to search, filter and preview workouts details allowing users to find the right workout in just three clicks.
As the app evolve beyond a simple 3-5 screen navigations, users initially started to struggle to navigate the new experience according to customer service tickets. To ease this transition, we created an engaging onboarding flow highlighting the key features with animated walkthroughs. Making learning intuitive, fun and effective... and users loved it.
User feedback indicated a desire for creative random workout experiences leading to the creation of the "Detroit Dash" feature, a high detailed performance freestyle screen, designed to motivate both amateurs enthusiasts and professional athletes to challenge themselves by providing detailed performance metric in an attractive and intuitive layout.
This was honestly one of the most visually challenging parts of this app by combining a lot of information in one single screen and make it easy to understand, ease to see, inspiring and adaptable for diverse users.
During the time we made those improvements,
users in the app where triplicated within a year
Now the app have active users in more than 50 countries
"The old app was plain trash. Nothing worked and what was working was on it’s way to be broken. I’m guessing Maxpro hired a better team or something because the visuals are pretty good, I particularly like the icons as I understand what’s behind every little icon (I’m not too much tech savvy)"
The basis of a good, entertaining and motivating workout where founded and working well, now the company needed to give one more step, and this was create a community.
Why? Because fitness is not just about individual progress—it’s about shared experiences.
Research and users feedback revealed that people thrive when they can share their journey, find encouragement, and celebrate milestones with others.
This social layer is build with
- Social feed with latest posts from community
- Social posts to share workout results, awards, photos, etc.
- Interactions such as comments and reactions to celebrate others.
- Friends & followers to build meaningful connections.
- In-app chat to stay connected with others.
Redesigning the MAXPRO app taught me that innovation and grow isn't just about adding features, it's about thinking what the user needs, want and ensure that users can intuitively adopt those innovations to add value to their lives.
Creating a featured-rich user-centered experience requires a careful balance between creativity, functionality, feasibility and usability, by having these concepts in mind, I had a clearer vision of what to do.
Whether you have a job opportunity, or just want to say hello, I’d love to hear from you!
