Introduction

In the ever-expanding landscape of virtual reality (VR) gaming, VerseUs Games has emerged as a studio eager to tackle this market with their product, Fitness One XR.

During a 2 week sprint and in collaboration with my elite team our mission was to transform Fitness One XR into a seamlessly immersive experience accessible to both existing enthusiasts and newcomers alike.

The Final Results

Bellow you can see our high fidelity deliverables for the project. Fully working prototypes made in Figma.

Design Thinking - Empathise

1. Projections reaching 3.6 billion users by 2028. (Notably, there’s an interest in VR across generations, including Generation X and Boomers.)
2. By 2025 its expected to value $60 billion.
   
3. There are approximately 171 million individuals actively engaged in VR experiences.

SWOT Analysis

We conducted a SWOT Analysis of the current product. Why?

Understanding the stakeholder, the product, how it is situated in the current market and identifying untapped demographics helps us address challenges like market saturation and align our design goals with VerseUs Games' business objectives.

Interviews & Surveys

We combined interviewing and surveys to better understand what the wants, needs and pain points of the users were.

From 106 individuals surveyed, 28 aligned with our target group — educated individuals aged 45 or older, showing a willingness to embrace VR for fitness.

Design Thinking - Define

Creating an Affinity Diagram really helped to collect the finding and user insights we found during our qualitative and quantitative research. It gave my team and I space to express our thoughts and interpret the data openly.

We saw that the new users wanted the design to be simple, User Centric, motivational and use terminology older people could easily understand.

User Journey

Creating a User Journey gave us insight into potenial opportunities for the product. We saw that Sophia would need to be able to set limitations within her home so that she didnt accidently hurt herself whilst working out.

She is also overwhelmed by the complex menu options. It could be a chance to make a 'Quick play' option for her here.

Design Thinking - Ideate

Using hand drawn wireframes I could quickly test and present my ideas to the rest of the team regarding many aspects of the design process. Flushing out the good ones from the bad ones.

Atomic Design (Design System)

By breaking down the interface into modular components – atoms, molecules, and organisms – I ensure consistency, efficiency, and flexibility across the project.

It also helps when collaborating as a larger team or with developers to better implement and understand the component.

Design Thinking - Prototype

We prototyped in low and mid-fi, testing each time with users and listening to their feedback.

Bellow is the final working prototype, created in Figma. It shows the Happy User Path of the user from the home screen, selecting a tailored routine, to seeing their post workout stats.

Design Thinking - Test

Usability

Feedback highlighted these areas for improvement;

- Adjustments in text clarity

- Feature functionality

- In game currency

- Physicality of using controllers whilst doing workouts!

Desirability

Through desirability testing with 36 users, we validated our choices, with over 75% of participants finding the new font style highly legible.

Issues with testing

A problem with had with the project was our limitations in testing the solution on a physical headset. As the client did not provide such a device we could only test it on a desktop.

This meant that our users wouldn't be able to objectively comment on any design changes we proposed to implement.

Next Steps

- People not convinced by the use of VR for home workouts.

- Budget and cost of such devices was off putting.

- Smartwatch version of the game would serve as an entry point for non-VR users. Paving the way for them to invest later down the line.