FBF+Final+Report

**The Problem:**

People often enjoy exercising with a partner or a group, but don't have anyone to exercise with. There are various region-level or higher online services to search for workout buddies, but such a site specifically dedicated to UMD students would have exclusive value for students because we have a shared body of exercise resources (e.g. Eppley Rec Center, UMD clubs, etc.). Broader sites don't address this level of specificity. Users will create profiles listing which activities they are interested in, what schedule time they have available, where they live, and what they are looking for in a buddy (It is not mandatory to complete every aspect of the profile). We will allow searching for profiles based on various search fields (workout interests, location, year, gender, etc.). There will also be a forum, with individual boards for each exercise interest.

**Credits:** Felix Anderson: Proposal, Low-fidelity design, Usability test, Report Ailun Liu: User Needs, Low-fidelity design, High-fidelity design, Report, Final interface. Yifu Ma: Low-fidelity design, Final functionality Aida Soleimani: User Needs, Low-fidelity design, High-fidelity design, Report, Final interface.

** Audience: **

Our target users are UMD students who want to exercise and want other people to exercise with. They will be required to provide an email address @terrapin.umd.edu to join. We would like to appeal to all students, regardless of what exercise activity it is that they're interested in.

** Competitive Solution: **

[|Find Fitness Partners], [|Exercise Friends] and [|Fit Together] etc. These competitive solutions are for people all over the nation or even all over the world.The users of these sites are not filtered and it may be harmful to users' safety if they decide to meet in person. Since the user scope of the site is only limited to UMD students, students need not to worry that buddies they find are some strangers and may put themselves in danger. Besides safety concerns, the competitive sites also allow users from wider range of regions other than focus on certain area, which could be more inconvenient for users to meet in terms of commuting.

** Our Solution: ** ** Overview: ** ** Enable users to search for partners by interest **  People may want to focus on certain exercises; therefore, we want our users to be able to search for partners who share common interests (e.g. jogging, swimming or lifting). When guests/users want to search for partners, they are required to create their personal profiles and specify the activities they are interested in so that they will be searchable for others as well.

** Enable users to communicate/interact with each other **  Our initial idea is that the main page will be the place to announce news or events either by users or administrators so it’s visible for everyone. In addition, users should not be limited to only interact with their own partners. Users can request to create a page/forum of their common interest of activities to share their goals, tips or progress.

** Enable users to access to on campus fitness resources, activities and ** **some other useful information**  We will link our website to the school recreation center page so our users can easily find the information they need from the school gym. They can find program schedules, updates or even weather alert if they are going to participate outdoor activities or sports.

** Enable users to plan and exchange exercise schedules ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Since UMD students all have Gmail account now, users can grant permission for their partners to view their Google Calender where they save their schedules. Thus users and their partners can plan and arrange their exercise in advance since they know the time each others are available.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">** Screen Shots: ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">** Main page: ** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">** Edit Profile Page: ** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">** Profile: ** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 25px;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">** Buddies: ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">** Messages: ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">** Search: ** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">**Transition Diagram:** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Usability Study:**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Methods** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">We gave testers a pre-test to collect demographic information. We asked testers to (1) log in, (2) create a profile, (3) search for buddies, (4) add a buddy, (5) remove a buddy, and (6) log out. After testing the system, participants took a post-test that asked about the difficulty level of each task. The post-test also included some open-ended questions.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Testers** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">1. 17-year old male who doesn't exercise regularly. He had some frustration with buddy-related functionality. He said they didn't work well. He also commented positively on the layout of the site. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">2. 24-year old male, exercises frequently. He gave positive feedback on the search page, but said the profile could be improved. He also criticized the look and feel, saying for instance that higher contrast would be appealing. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">3. 21-year old female who doesn't exercise regularly. She felt that the controls to create a profile were not particularly intuitive. She gave positive feedback on the overall function and purpose of the site, and called it interesting. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">4. 22-year old female on a sport team. She liked the idea of the site. She said the search page was confusing. She pointed out that some of the other features of the site (not directly involved in the usability test) were unfinished, and the links dead.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Post-test results** (1=easy, 5=hard) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Problems and Changes** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">The task of searching for buddies had a distinctly bad difficulty rating. It turned out that we had a bug that caused search results to be displayed incorrectly. This has been fixed. We had some criticisms about the look of some of the pages. This has been largely unchanged, although we did tweak the appearance of some menus. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">We have also added a messaging system. We did not directly solicit feedback about this, but it also wasn't in the prototype we tested with.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Open Issues:** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">There are a number of open issues with this project. Some desired features remain to be implemented. These include an inter-user messaging system, a forum, and pages for individual activities with related links. An integrated calendar service would also be a good addition.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Even only considering the functionality currently implemented, there are some holes. If forms (e.g. the form to search for buddies) are not filled out completely, the program throws an uncaught exception. The search page could also be improved. The two separate forms for searching for people (by gender/age/major vs by interest) could be consolidated into one form.