Introduction

In early April of 2022, our project partner Maury Fredricks approached us to develop a product that offers various at-home exercises for seniors aged 65 and above so that they can age at home for longer. However, after conducting interviews with living-in-home seniors and background research (see Appendix C and Appendix D), we discovered that a physical solution does not adequately address the problem of exercising at home. Indeed, seniors face issues with intrinsic motivation and lack of resources and guidance required to carry out holistically beneficial fitness activities integrated within their homes (see Appendix C). We reframed the problem and our mission to tackle three barriers that seniors face when exercising: Accessibility, Awareness, and Ability.

Accessibility: Seniors lack access and information to user-centered and professionally recommended workout routines.

Awareness: Seniors are unaware of health habits that can improve their living conditions.

Ability: Seniors lack the ability to complete many standard workouts, as many exercises do not accommodate for pre-existing conditions or current health status.

While there are some existing solutions to motivate seniors to workout, none meet all three criteria. The next best alternative, SilverSneakers Go app, provides seniors with access to on-demand workouts and live in-person exercise classes [1]. However, some users complain the nearest facility is too far away, and a review on the app store cited that the workouts are “boring and not challenging” [2]. It also does not offer any ability to set and track long term goals or activity metrics such as steps and calories burned, which Johns Hopkins Medicine has shown to increase user motivation (See Appendix C) [3]. Thus, the SilverSneakers Go app does not sufficiently address Awareness and Accessibility for users. Users must resort to other third-party apps to access such information. Other alternatives such as a Fitbit do achieve Awareness through day-to-day tracking services, but lack to meet the Ability criteria as the workouts are youth-centered and are not appropriate for seniors. Therefore, there is an apparent lack of solutions that address all three criteria (see Appendix C for more in depth analysis of existing solutions).

Together as a team, we combined the best of both solutions to develop our app, FitNest, that successfully addresses Accessibility, Awareness, and Ability. FitNest accomplishes these three criteria while also prioritizing health and safety, user privacy, and user experience (see Appendix B). The design can be broken up into several components (see Fig. 2 for a road map of FitNest):

• Sign in page: Each user will create an account to ensure user privacy and to sync the app among multiple devices. When creating an account for the first time, there is an initial survey so that our app can account for each user’s abilities.

• Home page: The home page shows a humanoid figure where users can tap on a specific body part to view exercises for that body part. To prioritize health and safety, we included an emergency call feature on the home page of the app.

• Activity page: There is an activity page offering various fitness routines for every muscle group. Exercises are demonstrated via easy-to-follow videos.

• Help page: The help page connects users with professionals to receive personalized fitness recommendations. Users can also contact their physiotherapists and share with them their fitness progress.

• Stats page: The stats page tracks day-to-day activity metrics such as calories burned and steps taken. This helps make users more aware of their habits. This is also where users can set and view progress of their goals

• Home Scan page: This page provides specific exercises users can do with household furniture. This increases workout variety and options to enhance user experience.

Our report outlines our solution to the problem and highlights the justifications of each component of our app. Through primary and secondary research, mockup testing, and interviews, we have gathered data on our users’ preferences and tailored the app to their needs. We will highlight more information in the Users and Requirements, Design Concept and Rationale, and Next Steps and Limitations, and Conclusion sections of our report. Our sources can be found in the References section. Additionally, we included the following appendices: Project Definition, Ethics Statement, Background Research, User Observation Result, User Testing Results, Expert Interview Results, Client Interview Summary, Design Review Summary.