Competitive Analysis: Fitness Apps

The second unit in my course on User Experience and Evaluation was on competitive analysis — looking over the competitive landscape in a given marketplace, and using that data to figure out both the low-level design and high-level strategy you should use to effectively compete.

While I considered doing an analysis of the productivity management/to-do-list marketplace (an area on which I have many opinions), I realized that the end result of that analysis would be “the marketplace is saturated, and the ‘table stakes’ level of functionality is prohibitively expensive to achieve.” Not the most exciting result.

Instead, I looked at another area where I’ve gone through a surprising number of apps: fitness tracking. Specifically, workout planning and tracking – I did a previous assignment on how people use the gym, and one of my findings was “hoo boy are there a lot of different systems for planning and tracking a workout.”

After downloading quite a few apps and compiling a rather monstrous spreadsheet, I put together the results into a report, which I’m now posting here.

(Will I be using these findings to develop an app? … No comment.)

For those using screen readers, or who prefer their own reading environment, you can download the full presentation PDF here:

Competitive Analysis ReportDownload

Did I use one of my own apps as an example of a ‘good design idea’? Yes, yes I did. And I stand by it.