Tendon
Tendon is a product for fitness professionals to provide their services as personal trainers, by creating personalized workout schedules, healthy recipe collections etc., and staying connected to them throughout their fitness journey.
Client
DeepScope, a start-up in health and fitness sectors
Scope
Product design, end-to-end
Team
1 product designer, 1 CEO, 3 developers
Timeline
January 2022 - June 2022
Background
When I started working for Deepscope, a start-up company based in the United Kingdom, as its first product designer, they already had a few products created for the health industry.
One of these products was an app for medical professionals, such as doctors and physical therapists, to create daily schedules for their patients, so that they get reminders and instructions for everything they need to do to improve their health, like taking their medications, doing necessary exercises, or following a certain diet.
In order to get a deeper insight into the product, I started conducting 1-on-1 interviews with the primary users of the product, the medical professionals. During these interviews, I realized that a high number of them were physical therapists who were also working as personal fitness trainers, and most of their clients were not even people with health issues, but rather people who hired them for fitness courses.
This just happened to be around the time the COVID-19 pandemic was starting in 2020. Gyms were closing their doors, and lots of trainers who worked at gyms were looking into starting their online businesses. The opportunity was there, and we decided to pivot from the health to the fitness sector. So Tendon was born.
Connecting Fitness
The name Tendon, the connective tissue between our muscles and bones, was chosen to symbolize the idea of the connection between trainers and their clients. I have created a new branding using a darkish red as the primary color to symbolize the energy of fitness, and a rendering of a tendon, that also reminded a flick of flame, again referencing the idea of energy.
Tendon started as a clone of the previous health industry product but it needed to provide fitness-specific features, so the next phase of user research was focused on personal trainers and their respective clients, people who wanted to get into shape from the comfort of their homes. A timeline was created, first to tweak the existing product to craft an MVP, then to start adding new features with fitness in mind.
User and Market Research
During research, we learned that personal trainers were offering different tiers of services for different kinds of clients. User research brought forwards two personas:
Amanda, the fitness lover who is willing to buy premium personal training services
Lucas, the fitness beginner who wants some personal guidance, but not spend a lot of money
Persona 1: Amanda
Amanda is a serious fitness person, for whom it is a lifestyle.
She wants a hands-on approach from her personal trainer (PT), with continued guidance in everything fitness, from weekly workout plans that is custom made to her current needs, to a dietary program that will coincide with her fitness goals.
She would like to have an open communication line with her PT for her questions, and get one-to-one (online) fitness sessions to make sure her form and technique is correct.
She is willing to purchase personal training services continually, possibly getting more private sessions when she has more time.
Persona 2: Lucas
Lucas has never been consistent with his fitness goals but is willing to change it. He thinks that just signing up to a gym is not enough for him to commit to a healthier lifestyle.
He is worried about following a wrong workout schedule, either wasting his time, or hurting himself going too fast. He wants a personalized but flexible workout plan that he can follow by himself. He would like to get regular feedback from his PT, which would also help his consistency with added accountability.
He is willing to purchase regular workout plans and healthy recipe booklets, but does not have the budget to retain a PT on a regular basis.
Web and Mobile Products
The product had two facades, the trainer-facing side, mainly via desktop web, providing a suite of tools that helped trainers manage their businesses, and the client-facing side, via mobile apps, that allowed clients to receive all the content their trainers had prepared for them.
In order to be able to support clients’ different needs, we have crafted Programs as content packages. Depending on how a trainer sets it up, Programs could be purchased through trainers’ profiles, or be created specifically for a client as a private Program, and assigned to them by the trainer. This allowed trainers to create different streams of income, a passive stream from the more affordable program sales, and an active stream from their premium customers who would be in contact with them throughout their workout calendar, receiving support, and even online training sessions.
One of the pain points for fitness clients turned out to be their concern about whether they were wasting their time and effort by doing things wrong. They wanted to know if they were doing exercises right, eating the right things for their goals, etc. So modules within programs offered a range of features to make sure that trainers can create the best resources for all things concerning their clients’ fitness plans. Modules included detailed workout plans with demonstration videos and precise set counts, and meal plan modules that supported recipe videos and PDF files.
Social Features
After the first trainers and clients started using Tendon, I also joined as a client to the platform to experience it firsthand. Some online trainers were very interested in boosting their online presence and creating an online community around themselves. They were mainly using Facebook groups to manage these communities, offering freebies to create more engagement, and encouraging people to reach out to learn about their services. This led to the addition of social features to Tendon: (1) messaging between trainers and their (prospective) clients, and (2) social communities managed by trainers.
Beginning as a health sector product, Tendon reached numerous people, from doctors and physical therapists, to personal trainers and gym workers in need of work during pandemic, as well as their clients who sought their professional expertise.
Along the way, it was also white-labeled for a fitness company and has been used by hundreds of their clients.
But unfortunately after a year of operation, Tendon had to cease further development due to not being able to reach its financial goals.