PRODUCT DESIGN
LAUNCHED!
Collaborators
Bo Wu, Emma He, Robert Kjemhus, Vidhi Shah
My Role
UX Designer —
Visual Design
Interaction Design
User Flows
Rapid Prototyping
Usability Testing
Timeline
2022 - Present
Overview
Ginkgo Active is an AI-powered personal training app for older adults and their parents, designed to keep them active and healthy.
In the early stages of the product design process I was the primary designer working alongside a senior mentor. As the team grew I also assisted with project management, working with stakeholders from business, health, and development.
Leading up to our first launch I also helped establish a workflow process for shipping new features and created a website for marketing. MVP successfully launched in Q4 2024 with 100+ users onboarded within the first 3 months and many praising the customization and personalization features of the onboarding and initial training process.
THE PROBLEM
Physical activity in preventing decline
Physical activity is one of the most effective methods to prevent physical declines, however, it is drastically under-utilized. 1 in 3 older adults fall and injures themselves each year, costing healthcare systems an estimated $80 billion in expenditures.
It takes on average 8 hours for a health expert to do a full health assessment, craft a data-driven exercise program, and teach the patient through step-by-step training.
Using an AI expert system, we can digitize the entire process to help users safely get active with a personalized exercise program, in a fraction of the time.
DIRECTION
Who do we target first?
What are their goals?
Understanding the needs of different user types
We identified 4 types of users facing problems that Ginkgo Active can help solve as potential targets.
Government
Funding and managing public healthcare services.
Insurance Companies
Increasing profit, analyzing risks, and reducing fraud.
Employers
Offering competitive benefits and boosting productivity.
Families
Maintaining health of family and balancing work-life commitments.
Based on our market analysis, we chose to prioritize families (B2C business model), specifically those with seniors who could most benefit from Ginkgo Active.
RESEARCH
Themes
For seniors, learning a new technology will be the biggest challenge. We conducted research with several senior communities in Vancouver to learn more.
KEY FINDINGS
People want their family to be healthy
Educating their loved ones is difficult and they don’t know where to start
Almost everyone relies on their partner or family members to keep them accountable
“Its not enough for just me to be healthy, I don’t want to be healthy and looking after a sick parent, I want us all to be healthy.”
Too much knowledge, not applicable
People want an overall solution, not just point solutions
People don’t know how to safely get started
Everyone has different health conditions so there is no one-size-fit-all solution
Judgemental, high barrier to entry
Harder to get started due to lack of confidence and inexperience
Athletic community can be intimidating for beginners
“Even if my insurance gives me free access to gyms I still won’t join because I’m intimidated and will feel judged by the very athletic people there.”
Insights
“Is this product right for me?”
Education and compassion builds trust during onboarding to encourage users to get started and open up about their conditions.
“I want my mum to be healthy.”
People want personalized exercise programs that can help the people they care about improve their quality of life and prevent injuries.
User Persona
Behaviours
Tries her best to maintain physical performance to prevent injuries with regular yoga classes and walks.
Uses apps like Headspace that promote wellness.
Proactive about her and her family’s health with regular check-ins and treatments.
Needs
Seeks convenient, flexible healthcare solutions that fit her busy lifestyle.
Wants to help her mom, 72, and recently gifted her an Apple Watch with fall detection to keep her safe.
Knows exercise is beneficial but doesn’t know how to get started.
Frustrations
Long-term effects of a sedentary work environment on her posture resulted in occasional back and neck pain.
Busy schedule makes it difficult to maintain consistent appointments for care, and she often has to reschedule due to work demands.
What We Learned
Next we prioritized the problems to solve for people like Emily and her mom. We conducted a group activity with 20+ adults and seniors to see what features they would most benefit from.
KEY FINDINGS
Dynamic exercise solutions for optimal results
A highly personalized exercise prescription that adjusts daily to the user’s conditions is the best solution with the lowest barrier to entry. We needed to collect ample personal data for effective personalization without overcomplicating the assessment process.
Interactive home exercise tool
A home-based program that adapts to the equipment the user owns—if any—lowers the barrier to entry for inexperienced users. We also created a 360-degree rotatable digital twin, allowing users to observe movements from any angle—something no other exercise app offers.
Empowering families through shared access
We included a family feature to allow users to support their senior parents by inviting them to join and receive personalized exercise plans. This will simplify the technical setup for seniors, encourage shared progress, and improve motivation and retention for all family members.
Prioritizing accessibility for seniors
Finally, many accessibility features like audio narrations for all exercise instructions and dialogue were higher effort but we decided these would greatly benefit our senior audience and worth implementing at this early stage.
USER FLOW
We created lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes on Figma to test on our users for feedback. For this iteration of design we focused on these three user goals:
Onboard by completing the initial assessment with your health information to personalize your prescription.
Check in with your energy levels before and after exercising every day to personalize your daily workout.
Check in with any updates to your health information every 4 weeks to keep your personalized prescription up to date.
Transforming a complex health assessment into a frictionless onboarding process.
Working with Rob, our director of health, we transformed the assessment into a conversation, which felt more personal, less intimidating, and mimics real-life conversations with personal trainers.
We designed a trustable character, Professor Ginkgo, to embody the wealth of knowledge of our complex expert AI-powered prescription generation system.
This was incredibly successful as we found that people are more willing to open up when they felt like they are conversing with someone they see as their personal health expert.
1st iteration…
2nd iteration…
Current iteration
ITERATIONS
“What about my family medical history? What if that changes how my exercises are prescribed?”
Assessment menu
With trust in our process, people wanted to share even more information to further personalize their experience.
Filtering relevant categories
First we tried using the user’s goals as a filter for which sections are relevant to them, making the assessment process personalized. Then we can add more questions to each section, but show them only to those who would have relevant information to share.
After several user tests we found these goals and our assumptions on their relevant sections were too general and couldn't be scaled to larger communities of people.
Injury report - hips section
Guided assessment process
We added skip options to each section and let the user choose the level of detail they want to disclose. Throughout the assessment, the Professor accompanies each question to explain how their answers affect their prescription.
“I have trouble getting up from the floor so I don’t like floor exercises. Can I remove them from my training?”
Balance and mobility assessment
Users wanted to customize their training such as by limiting the times they get on and off the floor.
Improved assessment sections
We added more assessment questions to check for common pain points from our initial rounds of testing, such as their ability to do floor exercises.
We also found that it was important for users to report pain points between assessments, during their training phase. We improved the rest phases and added "Too Hard" and "Too Easy" buttons during training for users to give valuable feedback that would adjust the rest of their exercises.
After more testing, we noticed some users were using the “Too Easy” feedback option incorrectly because they either didn’t understand or weren’t doing the movement properly.
Exercise details
Better exercise details and instructions
Together with the health team we made muscle diagrams, preview animations, and improved instructions to explain the areas of focus of each exercise.
“I was busy and missed my training, can I make it up on a rest day later this week?”
Training schedule
Autonomy in establishing your own weekly training goals and meeting the guidelines for a healthy lifestyle.
During our research, we found the most reliable way to encouraging people to exercise every day is through intrinsic motivation, self-actualization, and behaviour modification. Weekly training goals are set by the user and completing their goals alongside their family members creates a sense of accomplishment.
The prescription is also fully customizable to work with people's busy schedules without compromising their progress.
RESULTS
MVP successfully launched in Q4 2024 with 100+ users onboarded within the first 3 months!
Within 3 months of shipping Ginkgo Active we’ve received many positive feedback from users, with many praising the customization and personalization features of the onboarding and initial training process.
USER FEEDBACK
“It feels like the app is listening to my body and that makes me feel safe… During the workout, when I did a push-up I realized my shoulder pain was making it hard to complete the exercise. Then I used the too hard button on the screen to report my injury. My exercise sequence was immediately adjusted accordingly. This feature is incredibly smart and helpful!”
“Enjoyed another workout today! I can tell it is harder than my last one after reporting some exercises were too easy. Now the intensity is just right, challenging but manageable.”
“I love the diversity of exercises in my prescription and all the muscle groups it is able to cover. Narrations like “Next is a core exercise...” also help let me know which part I’m exercising.”
Nov ‘22 Ginkgo Testing Event, Vancouver BC
TAKEAWAYS
Creative ways to do research
As a startup, finding users to conduct research before and after development was a challenge so we had to get creative. Using sketches, prototypes, heuristic evaluations, and internal team members were some of the ways we tested the product early on.
Listen to your audience
Challenging assumptions and listening to feedback from users was instrumental to each iteration of the design and enabled us to make a better product.
An evolving design system
The interface and design system is never finished, the document continuously evolves based on feedback and testing from people using it.
