With the start of the pandemic and people spending more time at home, Face Yoga started to become a popular lifestyle practice. It has potential to develop as a daily routine, just like yoga did a few years ago. Since the moment the idea first sparked, the competitor market was not fully established. Existing apps on the market lack aesthetic design and good user experience.
Develop & release a competitive iOS app for face yoga that offers an outstanding user experience to stand out against the market. Build a company website and social media channels to promote the product and build a community around the brand.
With the start of the pandemic and people spending more time at home, Face Yoga started to become a popular lifestyle practice. It has potential to develop as a daily routine, just like yoga did a few years ago. Since the moment the idea first sparked, the competitor market was not fully established. Existing apps on the market lack aesthetic design and good user experience. How might we empower our diverse users to use Bookings in the way they want, while making it simple, delightful and uncomplicated to use.
We kicked off the process with market research, a review of current experiences on the mobile market and brainstorming for developing the brand. We developed the brand's style guides and assets while developing the application's infrastructure. We then produced content and social media creatives while constantly educating ourselves on the topic. We first launched a website and social media channels before app release. We developed the app and tested it with users before launch.
Brand Design •Brand Guide •Social Media •Illustration •App Design •Web DesignThe logo took a strong emphasis in our brand's development. Since the product needed to stand out in the app market, we knew focusing on the logo icon was an important step.
After several rounds of iteration, we had developed FacelyU's final look and feel. Elegance, simplicity and feminity were what we wanted to communicate. A pinch of playfulness added to it - that's what we wanted to strive for with FacelyU.
Early iterations saw a toucan for our icon. Similar to apps like Duolingo we wanted to communicate FacelyU's personality through a face and create a recognisable brand. Eventually, we decided on a humanlike character for our icon.
The full brand guide is available as presentation on Canva:
Content on all platforms follows the visual brand guidelines. This allows for a cohesive brand experience.
I developed a set of illustrations for FacelyU. We chose a lineal color style for illustration (and logo). Illustrations were used for branding but also to encompass written instructions in the app interface to support communication to users.
Instead of the typical apps with a menu of structured workouts to choose from, at FacelyU a users starts a workout a real time video tutorial guides them through. Instead of offering pre-structured workout programs, we decided to apply a smart selection tool.
Originally, we planned for an app with a menu that offers structured workouts to choose from. Having pre-set workout programs is a standard practice within the lifestyle & fitness app market. After reevaluation we picked up on another approach that we figured could give us a competitive advantage: Instead of choosing a long-term program, the user can customise parameters of each individual workout. An intelligent coach would generate new videos each time and once a user starts a workout a video tutorial would guide them through the training I real time. A similar approach is taken by Down Dog.
A user does not need to navigate through an extensive list of workouts. They don't need to commit to a decision that they need to stick with until a week long program is completed.
Instead they are welcomed by a static home screen that allows them to start a workout right away.
An algorithm automatically creates a workout. This is made possible through a video library that is categorised by type of exercise (e.g. warm-up) and focus area (e.g. forehead). A drop down menu allows users to personalise the workout experience they desire as they are enabled to choose focus areas or workout duration.
The advantages of this layout include:
We collected user feedback during personal feedback sessions as well as by giving access to beta users via TestFlight.
One of the website's main purpose was to generate newsletter sign-ups, which is why we started with a landing page (amongst the legally required pages, of course). We then added a blog with search engine optimised articles to drive search results. We added sections to the homepage to educate about benefits and show our pricing model. Lastly, we added an about page.
We released the FacelyU app to the iOS AppStore in Autumn 2021. By the time I had grown FacelyU's Instagram account to over 700 followers interested in the niche.
We applied with FacelyU to Douglas' entrepreneurship competition "Beauty Futures - The Douglas Innovation Pitch" in 2021. A total of 196 Startups from 23 countries applied. Although we were in an early stage of the business and hadn't launched our app yet, we were able to make it to pre-finals with our product.
FacelyU has been my first time developing a product from start to "finish". Since it was a side project it took more time, however, we made great learnings on the way.
We started the project with rough knowledge about the market and target groups as it’s a rather new niche. Because of that we spent several rounds of iteration on branding before we to consolidated FacelyU as it exists today.
While finding a niche was easy, narrowing down the scope of the project was a bigger challenge to this project. For the future, we see lots of potential for scaling the product.Design-wise, I am looking forward to iterating and developing an outstanding user experience. Also, I would like to consider moving away from a gender-specific design approach – less feminine and more gender-inclusive – whether it’s with this app or an alternate version of it.One year after the initial brainstorming and deep-dive into the topic, we are convinced that our approach offers distinctive value to the market. Our approach to workout selection is unique and follows a user-centered design approach that allows users to take action without thinking too much. Design, marketing and engineering follow high standards and are vision is grande. Currently, we are working on an updated version of the website and looking forward to improving our app in beta testing while investing into our app’s growth.
At the time I started the project, I knew barely anything about how to build a digital product, start a business or UX design. I learned many new methods that I applied to the project and gained tremendous insights into the UX field. At the same time, I’m happy that I can draw from a substantial source of knowledge on human behaviour and research methods that I gained during my university studies. On a personal level, it was a fulfilling experience to not only pour my academic passion into the design process – but years of studying art theory and practicing art in my spare time.
