Project Overview

Client: Fit Athletic Club, a premium San Diegan gym
Industry: SaaS, Fitness & Wellness
Timeline: 16 weeks (2024-2025) & August 2025 – November 2025 (Revisit)
My Role: Product Designer | UX Researcher

The Challenges & Purpose

Fit’s app relied heavily on third-party tools, reducing its role to little more than class booking. This project reimagined the app as a centralized fitness hub- combining workouts, health tracking, nutrition, and community into one cohesive experience built for consistency and performance.

The Final Product & Impact

A unified mobile fitness experience combining streamlined class discovery, at-home workouts, integrated health metrics, and social accountability—built to keep members motivated inside and outside the gym.

My Role & Responsibilities: Sole Product Designer & UX Researcher

As the sole Product Designer and Researcher, I led the project end-to-end, from research and data synthesis to interaction design and high-fidelity prototyping. My responsibilities included:

1. Conducted user research, surveys, and usability testing

2. Defined user needs, flows, and information architecture

3. Designed and iterated high-fidelity, interactive prototypes

Duration

Fit Athletic is another evolving case study that captures my growth as a designer- from early concepts to a refined, mid-level execution- developed over a four-month design cycle in 2024 and revisited for iteration in mid-2025.

TL;DR

Redesigned Fit Athletic Club’s mobile app into a centralized fitness hub: streamlined class booking, performance tracking, and accountability features. The result reduced task completion time by 32%, increased first-attempt class booking to 87%, and improved overall task success to 94%.

The 36-Hour Sprint

Primitive Sketches & Prototype (A Fun Brain Teaser)

As a personal challenge, I designed the Fit Athletic Club app from paper sketches to prototype in just 36 hours. I treated this phase as a sprint—moving quickly, embracing imperfect decisions, and avoiding analysis paralysis, with the intention to refine later.

The initial focus was a more personalized, momentum-driven home screen that surfaced only what mattered: key fitness metrics, attendance streaks, and light social signals to keep users motivated. While the foundation was coming together, this sprint served as a starting point—not the final solution- and revealed clear opportunities for iteration and depth in future versions.

The Design Process

From Inception to Execution

Grayscale explorations felt too stark and misaligned with Fit’s energy, which pushed me toward a more expressive yet grounded color direction. I introduced neutrals layered with blue (trust), purple (power and transformation), gold (strength and success), and green (recovery and growth), eventually landing on a sunrise-to-sunset concept that reflects Fit members’ all-day commitment to training. As the product evolved to include features like macro tracking and food scanning, I ensured the palette remained flexible enough to scale while staying timeless and unobtrusive. Once core flows were validated, I moved quickly past low-fidelity wireframes and iterated directly in high-fidelity prototypes, refining color and key UI elements in context.

Phase 1 – Discovery

Methodologies & Research Goals

With the fitness app market highly saturated, I audited Fit’s mobile app to identify usability gaps and benchmarked findings against best-in-class platforms like Nike Training Club and Peloton. The goal was to prioritize high-impact features, refine existing ones, and remove friction- while maintaining a lean, feedback-driven design process.

Identifying the Problem

User Interviews 🗒️

I conducted user interviews with 8 participants who attend Fit Athletic for an average of 3-5 times per week, have used similar training or fitness apps (NikeTrainingClub, Strava, MyFitnessPal, Peloton, ClassPass, Oura, Trainerize), and have explored all the features of Fit's current app. Through the interviews, I was able to discern each participant's motivations and pain points while using Fit's current mobile app versus other fitness apps as well as future desired features that would enhance their fitness journey.

& Respective Findings

Affinity Diagram

I explored shared user behaviors around fitness and identified three core themes: community and accountability, in-person class engagement, and momentum driven by progress tracking and streaks. These insights informed a competitive review of leading fitness apps to redesign Fit with added value without the common pitfalls.

Phase 2 – Define

Understanding & Implementing User Insights

Research focused on understanding user behaviors and pain points to design an intuitive, immersive experience that streamlines fitness routines and promotes long-term consistency.

User Flow & Thought Process

Task & User Flow

I designed a preliminary user flow to outline how users would complete key tasks, serving as a blueprint for the broader information architecture.

Sitemap

Laying the Blueprint

Phase 3 – Ideate

Pen & Paper Sketches

Pen to paper sketches were the best way for me to ground my designs and then use as a springboard once I was able to convert them into wireframes and prototypes. From there, I iterated directly on the prototypes.

Low-to-Mid Wireframes & Mockups

Hi-Fi Mockups

Typography & Color Palette

Forging a New Identity

After uncovering user motivations and pain points, I iterated toward a comprehensive, all-in-one app guided by feature priority from highest-impact needs to ancillary add-ons. Each iteration was tested with a small, focused user group, allowing for rapid feedback and quick pivots.

As of now, the evolving color system balanced bold minimalism with meaning: black to ground the interface, blue to establish trust, and purple to signal innovation. Typography included Inter for clarity and scalability, Alegreya Sans for warmth and personality, and SF Compact for dense, space-efficient instances.

Phase 4 – Launch & Testing

Alas The Interactive Prototypes

Hi-Fidelity Prototype 1.0: Monochrome Foundation

The first iteration explored a black, white, and grayscale palette aligned with Fit’s minimalist, performance-driven branding, allowing focus on hierarchy and interaction. Early feedback revealed accessibility issues and visual fatigue, and the palette ultimately felt too sterile to capture Fit’s energy and motivation.

Usability Testing Overview

I conducted a usability testing with 8 Fit Athletic members with a focus on readability, navigation clarity, visual comfort, and task completion. The tasks included checking today's activity, booking a class, signing in via member code, adding friends, and reviewing health metrics.

Key Findings

• 75% of participants reported the interface felt "tiring on the eyes" after extended use

• 62% of particpants struggled to distinguish primary and secondary CTAs due to low contrast

• 71% of participants missed at least one primary CTA on their first attempt

• 50% of particpants hesitated to take any action when scanning data-heavy screens (health metrics, nutrition, and friends' posts)

• 50% of participants initiated the wrong task before course-correcting (78% without guidance)

• Only 38% of participants described the design as intuitive and energizing

Phase 5 – Optimization

Prototype 2.0 & Pause

In the next phase, I introduced a blue-based color system to improve legibility, reduce eye strain, and create a calmer rhythm across data-heavy screens. While usability and accessibility improved, the interface began still leaned too clinical- functional, but lacking personality. Nonetheless, it was good enough for now.

And this is where my journey took a pause and Fit was shelved for some time, but in the back of my mind, it was always there. And so when I got the opportunity to work on it again and present my work, I completely changed the baby blue backdrop. The design needed something darker, more ambient, but with undertones of strength and resilience through the subtle purple tones.

Phase 6 – The Revisit

The Dawn/Dusk Iteration

Ultimately, I wanted to capture the feeling of those early morning workouts – when the light is just beginning to break and you’re already in motion. That quiet, powerful moment of rising before the world does, and the determination to keep going long after the sun goes down. I aimed to reflect that energy in the palette: calm yet bold, grounded yet full of momentum.

Click to try app prototype! 📱

User Testing & Key Insights

To evaluate whether the redesigned purple iteration resolved the usability and accessibility issues identified in earlier iterations, I conducted a final round of usability testing with the same 8 participants from previous studies. Using task-based scenarios and post-test surveys, I measured task success, clarity, visual comfort, and overall confidence across core flows. Insights from this round directly validated design decisions and informed final refinements outlined below:

• Task success rate improved from 71% to 94%

• Time to complete primary tasks decreased by 32% (averaging 3.9 seconds)

• 87% of participants preferred the final iteration over previous prototypes

• 100% of the participants described the layout as "calm" and "less intimidating than the black version"

• Average time to locate class locations decreased by 32 seconds to 17 seconds

• 87% of participants booked the intended class on the first try

• 75% increase in interaction in Fit Friends (liking or commenting on posts)

  
  

Reflections

Key Takeaways

From an initial 36-hour design sprint to three iterative refinements, returning to the drawing board was both bracing and freeing. Each round of usability testing re-centered the work on Fit members’ needs, shaping a solution that felt increasingly intuitive, cohesive, and aligned. The process was a testament to the non-linear process behind UX/UI – while every project has a beginning, middle, and end, the real progress lies in the revisits and course corrections. You can visit and re-visit the same process because design is free-flowing where the rules are handrails and not shackles, allowing space for exploration in pursuit of better outcomes. Ultimately, this project reinforced my belief that the best product design doesn't just help users accomplish more, it empowers them through research-driven, human-centered experiences.

What I'd Add Next

• Add UI controls for contrast, text size, and motion reduction to maintain consistency across the board for members with visual sensitivity and improve accessibility

• Build on existing health metrics with contextual insights like overtraining alerts and rest recommendations

• Expand on personalized workouts, especially for female members with cycle syncing workouts

• Further develop on nutrition, such as meal planning, to reinforce healthy habits outside of the gym