The challenge

Yoga teachers need comprehensive experience in knowing which yoga poses go together well for their classes. Not knowing which yoga poses match, a lot of new yoga teachers feel insecure about their sequences. Teachers with a medium level of experience have a different challenge: they report feeling not creative due to a lack of inspiration.

The solution

To give guidance and inspiration to yoga teachers, I developed a smart yoga sequencing app, which guides the user through the process of creating yoga sequences, giving them suggestions and new ideas.

My role

As a solo designer, I was responsible for the entire design process, including research and discovery, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

Empathize

In the empathy stage, I conducted secondary research as well as primary research in the form of interviews with yoga teachers.

Secondary research

For the secondary research, I discovered insights from a study about yoga teachers in the USA, which was conducted in 2016. Additionally, I explored personal experiences shared on blogs and forums.

Define

After gathering information about creating yoga sequences in the empathy stage of the project, the next step was defining the problem. For that, I analyzed the research data with an affinity map, created empathy maps and personas about the typical users, and defined the problem statements that need to be solved.

Affinity map

I organized all the notes taken during the interviews in an affinity map. The structuring highlighted that yoga teachers similarly construct their sequences:

1. Warm-up
2. Peak pose*
3. Cooldown

* Typically a more advanced yoga pose, which is the theme of the sequence

Empathy maps & Personas

With the affinity map, I discovered that there are two types of yoga teachers who have different problems: new yoga teachers and more experienced teachers.

I created empathy maps and personas to describe their feelings, frustrations and motivations in more detail.

New teachers struggle to create coherent sequence

More experienced teachers are out of new ideas for sequences

How might we questions

The research concluded that there are two distinct personas with different problems. The problems that should be solved in this project arose from the main pain points:

Ideate

Having clearly defined problems that need to be solved, I started the ideation process. This process began with brainstorming solution ideas and ended with wireflows.

Choosing the smart yoga sequence builder for reliability

After evaluating the solution ideas, I chose to move forward with the smart yoga sequence builder. This tool provides instant feedback since the user is not dependent on other people to assess their work.

User flows

With the solution idea in mind, I created user stories and defined the most important red routes through user flows.

Signup / login

Teachers should have an account since they should be able to retrieve their sequences later.

Create / edit yoga sequence

The teacher should start creating the sequence by adding a frame (peak pose, level of difficulty) so that the tool can give feedback on it later.

Print yoga sequence

Since teachers need their yoga notes in the class as a backup and do not like to use their phones, they need to be able to print the sequence.

Sketches

Having the base of the clearly defined user flows, I created the sketches of all screens related to the red routes.

• Having a mobile app to ensure mobility
  Since yoga teachers emphasized in the interviews that they like to move around on their yoga mat while creating sequences I designed the tool to be a mobile app.
• Displaying yoga poses as list items to replicate the notebook
  When writing down the sequence with pen and paper, teachers usually write the names of the poses underneath each other. The app should display the poses in a similar way to match the real world.
• Display feedback in a modal
  When the user adds a yoga pose that does not fit in the sequence, they should get feedback about it and see an explanation in a modal to pay extra attention.

Wireflows

After creating the wireframes, I clarified the connection between the screens through wireflows, showing which interactive elements lead to which screen.

Prototype

Having a promising solution idea sketched out and planned with wireframes, the next step was to build a realistic-looking prototype. For that, I created guidelines through a style guide, high fidelity mockups, and an interactive prototype.

Test

To validate the design, I conducted two rounds of usability tests with 5 yoga teachers each.

Round #1

The goal of this moderated usability test was to find the main usability problems in the three red routes: create account/sign up, create yoga sequence, print yoga sequence.

Round #2

In the second round of usability tests, it was especially important to see how the iteration on adding yoga poses and viewing suggestions changes the experience.

Conclusion

In the project, a smart yoga sequence builder was designed. This builder stands out from other tools because it gives the teachers suggestions on how to structure their sequence best. It gives new teachers the longed-for guidance and provides experienced teachers with fresh inspirations.

Yoga teachers are curious and excited about the product, which got confirmed in the usability tests. They asked when the app will get finished and if I can keep them in the loop because they want to try out the updated features.

Working with target users together to define the most meaningful yoga pose filters has taught me how important it is to collaborate with potential users frequently so that the project can solve the problem in the best way possible.

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