Video Tutorials
Our exercise videos required a production process that could take months - not to mention the translation process into 10 languages for each exercise.
In 2020, we decided to re-think How might we improve the experience and allow us to scale faster.
Roles: Product Designer / Project Lead
Tasks: UX Research, Concept, Visual Design & Interaction
Platforms: Android & iOS
THE IMPACT
We sweat but we delivered
Business Impact
80% reduction in costs compared to previous production and implementation back in 2014.
Product Impact
Localization and copy improvements or changes can now be implemented within 2-3 days. In 2014, such changes required about 2 months. This concept allows us to improve on-the-go and iterate when users provide us with feedback, making it scalable.
User Impact
From day one, our users actively appreciated the sense of autonomy we provide them with regards to viewing the exercises at multiple angles and speeds.
Users were also pleased to see the variety of exercises grow, allowing them to spice up their workouts when necessary. Women were happy to see themselves more represented in the videos, especially when carrying out more complex movements.
Much less time to adjust our exercises in accordance with user feedback. We have already updated at least 10 exercises with new, more understandable cues after user feedback, while adding instructions on how to breathe properly or where to feel a stretch during particular exercises. This fosters confidence in the user as they sharpen their technique.
The % of 1st week users saying that they had correct technique has increased since the first release
THE PROCESS
Do not freak out but...
9 of our tutorial videos needed to be replaced due to rights infringement by end of 2020. This unleashed the need in our business to replace that material. However, the production cost for making those videos was too expensive and getting the exact same look was really challenging.
As our users have been stating their desire for variety too, we saw an opportunity to revisit and improve our overall video tutorial experience.
We started by making a list of “wished” movements a.k.a exercises. Followed by a collaboration session where all pillars of the company (marketing, user experience, training experience, business development, localization and engineering) provided their input and needs. This allowed us to prioritize the most critical issues that we had at that point in time.
User reserach took about 2 months
Early prototypes
During our research we needed to understand if there was a preference about colors, lighting, music, device position, voice over or not…
There were a lot of variations on what people find engaging and what not. For the color, for example there were ideas like different color lighting when there was more effort, or change the voice of the coach if people needed an extra push. This unfortunately was not technically possible and would have made our videos less scalable which was our top priority.
The cycle of user testing and conceptualization, gave us the opportunity to involve engineering, the creative and production team early. This way the prototypes were as close as possible to our desired outcome. The creative team were able to calculate budgets, devs were able to test the technical requirements and I was able to test our hypothesis and prototypes. This included interaction and visual design.
We were ready to start pre-production and casting when COVID-19 hit Germany. With everything closed and with the strict measures allocated in the city, we had to think outside of the box. This push us to work with a local production house and athletes, simplifiying to its maximun the needs and coming up with a really simple but effective concept.
15+
Users shared their challenges when learning an exercise and how they prefer to learn the details
10+
People gave us insight into their preferences for color, sound, and phone position when watching exercise videos
30+
E-mails and comments were provided by users, stating their problems or wishes related to video experience
THE NEW EXPERIENCE
Autonomy and selfpaced
After a couple of iterations, we settle with a simple design. The interaction with the different perspectives and oportunity to watch the video in slow motion, are key in this experience. The instructions could have been more integrated but cause of technical and scope constrains we decided to separate them also visually from the inmersive video.
The flow
People can learn the movements before and / or during the workout.
THE LEARNINGS
Communication is key
During covid, communication with colleagues in real life was greatly reduced. When moving to digital channels we faced the challenge of keeping people involved informed and having relevant information in the necessary channels. We often made the mistake of opening up too many conversations and not centralizing information. It seemed that everyone had a piece of the information and only a few had the capacity to understand what was going on in the project.
We also learned a lot about backwards compatibility. We had to record some of the videos in-house with one of our colleagues on a low budget to avoid critical errors in the application when our users wanted to review their training history. when a user selects a past workout, the picture of each exercise and videos should still be available.
