ShapeMeUp
Fitness Platform
A dual-sided mobile app connecting fitness coaches with clients — built from scratch through deep user research during the pandemic when people lost access to gyms and in-person coaching.
Problem & Solution
Explore the Process
Click any section below to see the full research, design decisions, and screens.
Outcomes
What Was Used
Industry-standard tools applied across every phase — from user interviews and journey mapping through to hi-fi prototype and usability testing.
The core question driving this research was: how do coaches currently manage their clients, and what stops clients from staying consistent with fitness routines? Rather than assume we knew the answers, the research process began with direct conversations with real users on both sides of the platform.
Interviews were conducted with both practicing fitness coaches and their active clients. The goal was to surface pain points from each perspective separately before designing a solution that would serve both groups. Key themes that emerged from the coach side included:
Coaches were overwhelmed by communication scattered across text messages, emails, and verbal reminders. Tracking whether a client had paid their monthly fee required checking multiple places. Sending the same workout plan to multiple clients meant copying and pasting the same message repeatedly. Scheduling appointments with no central system led to missed sessions and confusion.
From the client side, the most common frustrations were not knowing where to start with a workout routine, having to juggle separate apps for workouts and diet tracking, and feeling disconnected from their coach between sessions.
Two major competitors were benchmarked — TrainerFU and MyFitnessPal. TrainerFU focuses almost exclusively on the coach side, leaving clients without a clear interface for their own plans. MyFitnessPal is entirely self-directed, with no mechanism for a coach to push personalised plans to a specific client. The gap identified: no single platform served both coach and client simultaneously with two distinct, purpose-built experiences.
The journey map traced the complete experience of both the coach and client from first contact through to ongoing weekly sessions. The map revealed that the highest frustration points occurred at two moments: the initial plan delivery (coaches had no streamlined way to send customised plans) and the day-to-day check-in (clients had no single place to confirm what they were supposed to do that day).
Three primary client personas were developed from interview insights, representing the core user archetypes. These personas guided every design decision throughout the project lifecycle — from wireframes to usability testing.
Six versions of each main screen were hand-sketched before any digital wireframe work began. This rapid exploration let design directions be tested and discarded in minutes rather than hours. The personas were consulted after every round to verify that layout choices addressed documented needs. The primary differentiator between versions was content hierarchy — specifically how the warm-up, workout, and diet plan were organised relative to each other on the client home screen.
Five participants took part in the low-fidelity usability test — three clients and two coaches. Each participant was given three core tasks to complete without guidance: finding today's workout, sending a message to their coach, and checking an upcoming appointment. Sessions were observed and notes were taken on points of hesitation, incorrect taps, and moments where participants expressed confusion.