Benchmark Gym - Nyca Young

Client
Benchmark Gym

Project
UX Research, Survey, Interview, Persona, Member Journey, User Flow, Prototype, Usability Testing, Next Steps.

Completed
2020

Overview

Benchmark Gym is based in Canterbury, NSW. This UX research uncovers opportunities to increase gym client retention in a saturated market.

What's the problem?

Most people in Australia, like me, have at one point been a member of a gym. With so many gyms, 19 gyms within 7 minutes drive from where I live to be exact, it's not only hard to choose but it also makes it easy for members to switch gyms.

Business

From the business side of things, the gym market is highly competitive. Below are some statistics from statistika.com;

There are about 3,500 gyms in Australia
32% of the growth is within the last 10 years.

Problem statement

This led me to the problem statement:

'How might we engage gym members to create more retention'.

Problem statement

This led me to the problem statement:

How might we engage gym members to 'create more rentention.'

Introducing Benchmark Gym:

Training focuses on functional movement and strength training
Similar to F45 model
Unlimited classes for AUD 65/week
Members get physical assessment before starting
Members have to book classes through Zen App

47% Member retention

Since its inception three years ago, 287 members have joined Benchmark Gym (BG) and only 136 remained. Which means BG has only been able to retain 47%, less than half of its members.

This is something we can potentially work on.

For research, I conducted 22 surveys that I posted in the gym Facebook forum using Typeform Survey. I also interviewed 7 members of different demographics.

For the purpose of this research, I decided to focus on the 2 primary personas out of 4 personas and their pain points and gains.

The Injury recovered/recovering clients wants to know progress and more social gatherings. They enjoy the synergy of exercising together and find that it motivates them.

The trainers/business owners are time poor and wishes for more things to be automated and wish they have moer time to be on top of clients needs and progress. They love seeing members improve and mingle before and after class. They also aspire to be the gym with the least injury.

I started by interviewing the trainers/business owners.

Our initial assumptions were that Zen Planner App is not user friendly. This prevents members from tracking exercises and thus prevents the trainers from being informed.

Is a better exercise tracking app the solution?

I decided to find out more information from the trainer and it turns out that only 23% of members had tried tracking using Zen App and only 6% are currently tracking.

Out of every member I spoke to, including the 7 interviewees, none of them tracks their exercises using an app.

Some of them said that they 'prefer to track intuitively' and find that tracking with apps 'time consuming'.

On the other hand...

70% of members are motivated by a tighter community. 21% and 11% members wants more events and more sense of community respectively.

However, 40% of members feel unsure that they are part of the community. Some expressed their need for more community based events and one interviewee said that "members might lask a sense of belonging due to a lack of culture".

Member Journey

From my observation and contextual inquiry, the member journey starts from exposure to ads or word of mouth about the gym. Then when the members enter the gym they talk to the trainers, that's when the 'relationship' between members and trainers starts.

Further along the journey, you can see empty circles that mark the points where the trainers are absent in the journey.

At the end of the journey you can see where clients get to a plateau in their progress and without support or the trainers noticing, the client would be enticed to terminate the gym membership.

I'd like to bring your attention to the point where members tend to plateau. What if another assessment is done, the next steps of their fitness journey is discussed. Instead of terminating the membership, the clients get motivation to continue and have something to look forward to, the improvements to make till the next assessment.

There's an opportunity here to potentially increase client retention.

All the research and observation culminated in an updated problem statement:

That in turn forms the hypothesis – we believe with a strong community and regular assessment, members will feel motivated to continue their membership.

Leading to the vision 'Your fitness family'.

Feature 1

As this is a study on how to improve the Zen App, below is the user flow on the first improvement to the booking feature. Please view the prototype here.

Usability testing

After creating the very first prototype and conducting guerilla testing, lab usabiilty testing and session recording using Maze.design tool, below are the thorns and buds for improvements.

Below are some iterations I've made to the prototype. The right side shows the next iterations.

Value

The value of this feature is visualised on the diagram below. The turqoise marks the potential time saved in a typical 55 minute Benchmark Gym class. From my observation, trainers spend about five minutes before class to identity clients they need to pay more attention to by asking the class who feels sore or pain. Some clients say where they have most soreness due to previous class they attended, an aggravated injury or RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury). Then trainers would guide the stretches accordingly. Or ask that particular member to do a different stretch.

Some members are more quiet and introverted so they just kept to themselves despite soreness or mild injury. During the class sometimes members does not stretch a particular area that is sore or did a movement that they were not meant to do and aggravated an injury. The trainers then have to tend to the member and help them stretch or come up with another movement on the spot. This takes the time away from other members. More importantly, this may cause an injury to client and client would need to recover, pausing their membership in the meantime. If clients do not feel safe and looked after, they may also quit the gym eventually.

Value

The value of this feature is visualised on the diagram below. The turqoise marks the potential time saved in a typical 55 minute Benchmark Gym class. From my observation, trainers spend about five minutes before class to identity clients they need to pay more attention to by asking the class who feels sore or pain. Some clients say where they have most soreness due to previous class they attended, an aggravated injury or RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury). Then trainers would guide the stretches accordingly. Or ask that particular member to do a different stretch.

Some members are more quiet and introverted so they just kept to themselves despite soreness or mild injury. During the class sometimes members does not stretch a particular area that is sore or did a movement that they were not meant to do and aggravated an injury. The trainers then have to tend to the member and help them stretch or come up with another movement on the spot. This takes the time away from other members. More importantly, this may cause an injury to client and client would need to recover, pausing their membership in the meantime. If clients do not feel safe and looked after, they may also quit the gym eventually.

At the end of the class, if a client is injured, trainers would have to tend to the client and does stretches that would eleviate pain and do more movement test to find out more about the strain.

These are the time that could potentially be saved if trainers were informed and knew before class starts, who they should pay more attention to and have more time to tailor an exercise for members who need it. This will also prevent more injuries, leading to higher member retention.

Feature 2

There are two more features that could be developed as an improvement to Zen Planner App. The second feature helps trainers and members set the next assessment in 3 or 6 months time. Trainers can also keep a record of things to improve on. So that members have something to look forward to and work towards. Most importantly, members feel looked after and the trainers are on top of their progress.

In this feature, images are also taken at every assessment and are sharable. The images are time stamped and laid out in side by side comparison with Benchmark Gym brand at the bottom. Saving trainers time for marketing through social media.

Feature 3

The next feature is to enable members of the gym to share and invite other members to events hosted by Benchmark Gym.

After a member receives a notifcation for an event, he or she can choose to share the event with another member and hopefully create a chain reaction. Other members will receive a notification that another member would like him/her to join. This will strengthen a sense of community as members have more things to talk about before and after class.

Next steps

The next steps would be to fine tune the protoypes and keep doing usability testing. I would also like to further develop and refine the prototype other features. Hopefully these would be able to increase client retention.

Most importantly, after all features are implemented, there need to be tests to determine what the optimal balance is between human interation and automation.

A little peek at my pen and paper process

With everything I do, I always start with (erasable) pen and paper. Here's a peek at the first draft of user journey that I did during the research. I really enjoy this process of getting to know the user as well as client.

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