Mude has an awesome trajectory. For more than 10 years producing innovative urban furniture for Brazilian cities, it has invested heavily in the concept of outdoor stainless steel workout stations. Today, proud to have more than 600 public and free stations and gyms spread all over Brazil, Mude brings health and well-being to over 200 thousand people.
In early 2018, André Braz, former experience director at Globo.com, invited me to join the UX team. Super lean initial team: Braz as experience director, me as the Product Designer and Carolina Novais as UX/Researcher.
The challenge was to design an app that could deliver great classes booking experience, arousing the brand's digital presence. We've also had the mission of exploring futurology territory 🔮, helping to define mid-term to long-term product's vision.
My role was to explore the possibilities of the Mude environment as a product, aiming to shape an effective launch strategy. I was responsible for the concept sketching, hi-fi prototyping, motion, macro/micro-interactions, and visual design.
In order to go deep into the product, we had to do our homework 📚. We've organized every data we had and sought to know everything that was happening in the universe around us. I've worked in for desk research, competition analysis, and everything else that would aid the discovery process.
The qual research was aimed at understanding aspects of people's relationship to exercise, from the most engaged ones to the less enthusiastic ones. The idea was gathering insights about their relationship with instructors, with the community and with the geographical aspects where each activity is made. We conducted 1:1 interviews with 14 people, between 18 and 40, practitioners of indoor and outdoor activities. Low budget, super guerrilla, with free coconut water as a gift. As a result, we've mapped four personas: The Body Controllers, The Balance Hunters, The Fickle and The Exercise Lovers, with their own needs to address.
How might we improve their lives? How might we deliver value to each of the profiles? How might we make outdoor exercise more fun and democratic? How might we teach to correctly perform each of the exercises, reducing injury risks?
The initial mindset was to explore as many paths as needed, understanding how far the app could go. But after opening possibilities, we had the tough mission of structuring the main and essential features. Lots of sketching, prototyping, endless debates. Roughly after a month of planning, we came up with a shiny draft of our roadmap.
01. Events carousel
This highlights different components of the platform. In most cases, it will foster events from our partners. However, it is also possible to highlight modalities, links to partners or even special and exciting single classes.
02. Modality mosaic
The modalities we see in the second block are the modalities available in each city. This content varies, and the mosaic adapts to the number of existing modalities in a city.
03. Classes list
This is the list of all classes in the city. To make it easier to use, it has been created a left-aligned vertical calendar system to make day and week orientation easier to reach.
Walkthrough
Events About Page, great space for further information and promotion
In the home screen, we can find the modality mosaic
Accessing the modality
Booking a class with our master trainers
Booking a class should be easy and painless
The classes consists of two states: (1) minified and the (2) expanded version
Truly amazing teachers up here ☝️
The experience of a Mude Class is really unique. And the Open Workout Stations are amazing. No joke. The teachers are truly inspiring, who are there to offer their very best. For Mude, each lesson should become a memorable moment for the student.
The biggest challenge of this project was to make the app a rightful extension of that experience. And I strongly believe that Mude is on the right track. And I think we have some famous dude agreeing with us:
Vin Diesel getting crazy about Mude
Jokes aside, It was an incredible journey. I would like to thank the amazing team Mude who have made this possible. Marcus Correia and André Braz, aka the bosses, you keep on rocking 🤘. I would like to thank Enne Muratori, Hugo Balarini, Tiago Pettersen and Tiago Souto, great partners in crime :)
Dear reader, if you got here, thanks again for your persistence and patience. 👋
