Skill Yoga Project
How to increase user engagement into the app.
ABOUT SKILL YOGA:
Skill Yoga is an app for athletes or sport practitioner who want to balance their practice through Yoga.
CURRENT USERS:
● 60% of the customers are from the US, 20% UK, 10% Canada + Australia.
●The app covers only some part of Europe. The reason is mainly because the product is available in English only so far, and the market is just a lot bigger in the US/UK.
● 85% of our current customers are male.
● 85% say their yoga level is “beginner” in onboarding.
● 90% of our users have a sports background. The top 3 are: gym, running and martial arts.
PROBLEM TO SOLVE:
To increase the early user engagement and stickiness of the product.
Especially: to increase the app usage from 2–3 times per week, for training to daily usage by adding new features.
SECONDARY RESEARCH:
- The old branding was designed around the claim “better athletes”. Their purpose is to make everyone a better athlete but more in a way that Nike says, that “everyone who has a body, is an athlete”. The term “athlete” is not something everyone can identify with, that’s why they need to become a bit softer here. As almost everyone who starts with yoga comes from a different sport, Skill Yoga can still make use of the idea that they’re there for active people with a history in sports and exercise, but the main goal is not to just help them improve in their main sport.
- Skill Yoga is absolutely progress oriented, they solve health problems and improve performance, they are scientific, and physical and mental progress lie at the core of their training system.
- Users don’t need the “woo-woo” spiritual side and the colorful India Yogi traveler world, but they want to be a yoga brand that is highly effective and also fits into the world of modern masculinity. Skill Yoga user is physically active and mentally calm, willing to give yoga a try but not keen to change their religion or their style.
- To sum it up: Skill Yoga wants to look and feel like a modern sport, not a hippie religion, but embrace the mental aspects and philosophy of yoga, coach on a scientific basis that focuses on performance improvements, yet understand that there is more in life than a six pack and a nice butt.
- Men are more competitive than women. Competition drives men in most situations. Especially ones that involve the opposite gender. That is not to say women aren’t goal-driven but rather subtler in comparison. In a study by Gneezy, Niederle, and Rustichini in 2003 when given the choice between a competitive and a non-competitive situation, 73 percent of male participants opted for the competitive option, but only 35 percent of female participants did. Statistics also say that females are more motivated by group classes, whereas a majority of men feel self-conscious and awkward. So when at a Yoga class you see women being an apt description of perfection, it’s probably not about competing with the one next to them, but if you push yourself beyond your limits to hold a pose while your whole body cries out in pain, you are a victim of unwarranted competition.
- Most missed training are usually because of work, leisure, and having sudden urges to laze around. Working out a schedule is sometimes harder than working out. period. We are only human. According to this study about 50% of people who start a workout program quit exercising within the first 6 months. The most profound reason? Probably scheduling issues. Different people with different routines are kept in mind when making most training. See any training you go to, is not made for your routine only. Users shouldn’t have to schedule the workouts.
- Skill Yoga is not attracting top athletes with their product, but rather everyday athletes that are a bit older, a bit more wise, and a bit more holistic about their training now. Their user base still has a competitive edge, but he understands that there is more to life than just outperforming someone in a sport. Skill Yoga users are active people, but they are also dads who want to be there for their children, they are stressed from work, have pain in their lower back from too much sitting, have shortened hamstrings from running and are annoyed by the superficial bodybuilding culture. But they still want to be the best version of themselves, fighting the ageing process. Investing in themselves, in body AND mind, will make them happy, healthy and successful.
SURVEY RESULTS:
I conducted a survey about the habits of yoga practitioners who are currently practicing yoga online. My goal was to understand what drives people to do yoga online and at the same time what drives them to leave the app, or not be constant. Surprisingly, I found that many people do yoga online 2/3 times a week and would like to increase their workouts on a daily basis. I also saw that most would like their daily workouts to last no longer than 30 minutes.
EMPATHY MAP:
In order to synthesize rational and sentimental aspects of our users through their situation, acts, feelings and emotions, I have designed an empathy map. It was very useful for me to design it in order to put myself into my users’ shoes.
USER PERSONA:
Through the data collected and the tools previously used such as the empathy map, the second research and the survey, I built my User Persona. It is Drew, a designer and entrepreneur, with a family and children. A sports enthusiast, running especially is the activity he loves to do the most. Drew is no longer 20 years old so he has to pay more attention to his body and respect it when he does sport. For some time now he has been suffering from leg cramps, a phenomenon not to be overlooked. Drew has been practicing yoga with Skill Yoga for a few months, he feels that after practicing the annoyances caused by cramps decrease. Unfortunately, however, he is not practicing every day, so when he is not practicing he has relapses.
USER JOURNEY:
In the scenario that I painted, Drew finds himself feeling a strong discomfort given by the lack of constancy in the practice of Yoga.
COMPETITOR AUDIT:
There are many online yoga apps that offer the same type of product by combining yoga and meditation. Probably in these apps it the teachers or the type of lessons are making the difference. This group of apps is aimed more at a female, beginner/intermediate target.
From a competitor analysis I could define that Skill Yoga is addressed to a specific target: the man of about 28 to 40 years old who wants to keep fit and to maintain the health of body and mind. Compared to other competitors Skill Yoga gives more space to the physical part and breathing. It is also directed towards athletes who are balancing years of sport with a healthy practice that stretches the muscles. The lessons create a progression in the user, are intense and leave out the part more related to spirituality, without neglecting breathing.
DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM STATEMENT:
“A busy man who wants to keep a healthy and fit body and a clear mind feels tired of bodybuilding needs to implement the quality of his training without sacrificing too much time.”
HOW MIGHT WE:
make users naturally attend a daily yoga practice efficiently?
GAMIFICATION:
Goals
Completing a task is engaging. Achieving a goal is one of my favorite things — whether it’s to deliver a website to a client, running a certain distance or learning something new. Even a small goal can bring great satisfaction. A while back, Ryan Carson of Carsonified posted a screenshot of one of the steps in Twitter’s incredibly clever sign-up process. It has changed a bit since, but the concept is the same: while teaching you how to use the service, Twitter makes you feel like you are accomplishing a goal by reaching the end of the progress bar. When I pull myself together to go for a run, and I’m almost at my goal, the lady on the Nike+ app on my iPhone says, “You’re almost at your goal. Keep it up!”. This always pushes me a little harder. In its app, Nike takes advantage of our desire to compete. Most importantly, Nike motivates and encourages its users.
“You cannot increase the intrinsic value of something by adding game mechanics. You CAN make the value more visible. You CAN change the paradigm and context of your site visitor from user to player — increasing their engagement.”
The Bartle Test
I did a second survey in which I asked people (all Yoga practitioners between 24 and 40 years old) to complete this test and tell me the result. When you’re using gamification in the enterprise world, it’s a good idea to understand how your players like to approach playing games. In summary, the Bartle Test is used to identify the gamer character of a user. Designed by Richard Bartle, the Bartle Test of Psychology, breaks up the way people play games into four simple categories. These categories are the Achiever, the Explorer, the Socializer, and the Killer. The quiz can be reached at the following link: https://www.matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/
I requested to yoga practitioners to fill the test. The goal is to understand the attitude of yoga people towards gaming elements, useful to consider during the ideation phase.
The most common dominant trait is explorer:
Explorers want to see new things and discover new secrets. They’re not as bothered about points or prizes. For them, discovery is the prize. Explorers are fine with repetitive tasks as long as they eventually “unlock” a new area of the game. Explorers are open to new horizons, to discoveries, to surprises! They are not afraid of change, they’re embracing it.
Gamification gives the opportunity to maintain or increase user engagement on a platform. Small rewards stimulate the user to interact more. In Skill Yoga, I wanted to give to the Explorer user the curiosity to unlock some “hidden” parts of the app. I thought to create Skill Live.
Skill Live is exclusive, full of rich live contents and high level workshops. It can be unlocked only by keeping an high score, practicing Yoga as much as possible during the week.
USER FLOW:
The happy path is related to get coins and attend more classes during the week.
PROTOTYPE:
After creating Skill Live I thought of a way to access it that would stimulate male competition. I thought of giving each lesson a score, the more lessons he attends, the user is rewarded with points. These points can be collected to unlock Skill Live and to be able to “pay” within Skill Live all the lessons and the special and exclusive contents that the app offers: live lessons, workshops with the best teachers.
CONCLUSIONS:
Each prototype must be tested for validity. In this case, in addition to conducting a usability test, I would try out the new features on some users and collect feedback on the product.
PROJECT DETAILS:
Product definition and strategy
Secondary Research
User and competitor research
Low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes
High-fidelity designs and asset creation
Thank you!
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