Project 03
Fitness Tracker
"Fake Out"
University Project
Hevy App - Growth
Empowering users to be healthier through behavior change
Project Overview
College students want to stay active but struggle with time, motivation, and consistency—especially when they can’t get to the gym. Our goal was to design a feature for an existing weightlifting app that supports health habits through intrinsic motivation and gamification.
Solution
We designed Growth, a new feature for the Hevy app that helps users build long-term fitness habits by logging gym workouts, micro-workouts, and reflections to grow a virtual tree—an experience rooted in intrinsic motivation and supported by meaningful gamification.
University Project
UX Design
Research
Prototyping
Timeline
April - May 2025
Research & Discovery
To support our design decisions, we conducted a literature review and five interviews on gamification, intrinsic motivation, and fitness behavior.
Literature Review Insights
- Gamification works best when used sparingly and meaningfully.
- Intrinsic motivation is driven by enjoyment, challenge, and autonomy.
- Visual feedback enhances motivation.
Interview Insights
- Students want flexible, low-pressure ways to exercise when busy
- Many value personal progress tracking over competition
-Users prefer tools that encourage autonomy and don’t guilt them
Ideation & The Solution
Our goal was to create a system that celebrated consistency over intensity and rewarded small efforts. This led to the concept of "Growth."
The core idea is simple: as you work out, you grow a virtual tree. This provides a visual representation of your commitment and progress over time.
How "Growth" Works:
Trunk: Grows when you complete a full gym workout.
Leaves: Grow when you complete short "micro-workouts" (e.g., 20 pushups at home).
Flowers: Bloom when you complete a reflection on your workout, connecting you to your "why."
Users start by choosing a cycle length (e.g., one week) and setting their own goals for gym, micro, and reflection sessions. This process gives them autonomy over their fitness journey.
As they complete activities, their tree grows, providing immediate, positive feedback. This visual progress builds a sense of competence. At the end of each cycle, the completed tree is added to their "Forest of Progress," a visual history of their hard work.
Design Rationale
Focus on Micro-Workouts:
Acknowledges that not every day can be a gym day. By encouraging small, achievable exercises, we help users stay active and maintain momentum.
The Tree Metaphor:
A positive, nurturing reward system. Unlike punishing systems where a streak is "lost," your tree simply represents the effort you did put in. It's a record of success, not failure.
The Forest of Progress:
This feature allows users to look back at their collection of trees from previous weeks. A taller, fuller forest visually demonstrates their long-term consistency and growth.
Customizable Goals & Cycles:
By letting users define their own goals, we empower them to set realistic expectations that fit their unique schedules, enhancing their sense of autonomy.
Reflections:
Prompts to reflect on why they are exercising helps connect users to their intrinsic motivations, moving beyond superficial rewards.
Limitations
Long-term Behavioral Change
Due to time constraint, we had no way of user testing to see if our solution would actually promote long-term behavioral change. We had to base our design decisions entirely on secondary research and primary interviews.
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation (Gamification)
Expanding on the previous limitation, due to time, we have no way to prove that our design will promote intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. Due to the nature of gamification, implementation needs to be carefully curated in order to target the right kind of motivation. We combatted this with as much secondary research backup as possible.
Next Steps
Deeper Wearable Integration: Incorporating data like calories burned or heart rate to influence the tree's appearance.
Refined Notifications: Researching the most effective, encouraging, and non-intrusive ways to remind users of their goals.
The "Oath":
Adding a feature where users could write a personal promise to themselves at the start of a cycle to deepen their emotional investment.