MAXPRO, a Detroit-based fitness company, revolutionized anywhere workouts with its portable machine offering up to 300 lbs of resistance.
In this project I lead the design of an 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.
Enhance the physical product experience while positioning MAXPRO as a top fitness technology brand.
• Tripled user base within a year.
• Increased user engagement and retention.
• Active users in over 50 countries.
UX UI Lead / UX UI 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.
The fast-paced and demanding nature of this project required for me to apply a hybrid, flexible, agile and goal-oriented methodology to be able to deliver in time without sacrifice quality.
As a startup and it's agile development I 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 the industry standards. All this information shaped our product strategy to be at the level of world-wide fitness apps.
The image in the right shows insights categorization to understand better how we were gonna to improve the app and if we needed to reinforce any aspect of the previous results.
In order to create a successful product, we needed to align goals for a smart execution by considering different perspectives of the stakeholders in the project.
• 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.
Now it was time to transform data, user needs and business goals into smart, simplified solutions.
We restructured the user journey to create a more intuitive and enjoyable experience, aligning functionality with purpose.
From there we had brainstorm and sketching sessions where the most accurate ideas became low fidelity wireframes and prototypes, These early concepts were presented to stakeholders to get valuable feedback, helping us to refine and evolve the design before moving forward.
Below, you can see a few of the wireframes we created for review.
Once the ideas and wireframes were polished by applying feedback and considering time frames and available resources, we were ready to refine the design by making it visually appealing and adding interactions that provide a enjoyable experience.
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 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.
In order to make sure that we were addressing the project needs with the designs proposed, we used to validate progress with stakeholders every week. We had three goals in mind:
- Define what is working and what is not.
- Define how we can do better.
- Define next week action plan.
This way we got valuable information, insights and a plan to continue improving the product while aligning it with users and project goals.
Personally, I enjoyed this dynamic, it made me learn a lot about collaboration, users need, perspectives as well as business goals and how they can evolve and continue to be integrated to create an awesome solution that actually have positive impact.
The delivery process was a living dynamic. As a design team, we maintained daily communication with the development team to align with project goals and constraints.
Our collaboration began in the ideation stage. Involving developers early allowed us to identify technical constraints and opportunity areas, helping us shape user-centered and feasible solutions within the given time frame and resources.
Once designs were validated, we worked together to define a clear handoff process. This included alignment meetings, interactive prototypes, and agreed-upon specs and asset standards to ensure a smooth implementation.
Finally, we executed UI QA to review the build, ensuring design fidelity and spotting areas for improvement—always with the goal of delivering a more refined and impactful product.
Below, you can see a diagram about our collaboration process.
Redesigning the MAXPRO app taught me that true innovation and growth go beyond adding new features — it’s about aligning collaboration, discipline, and a user-centered mindset with business goals.
Creating a feature-rich experience that feels intuitive and impactful requires balancing creativity, functionality, feasibility, and usability. With these principles in mind, I was able to approach the project with greater clarity and purpose — designing not just for the user, but for meaningful results.
Check out the app in stores
App Store · Play Store
"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)"
Whether you have a job opportunity, or just want to say hello, I’d love to hear from you!
