Academic Project · UX / UI Design · 2023
Avocado Fitness™
A fitness app built around real life. Not the version of you that never misses a gym day.
9+Interviews
25+Literature Reviews
8+Competitors Audited
Live Prototype
Not a mockup. The real thing.
Tap through the fully interactive Avocado Fitness prototype. Try onboarding, Quick Fit, rest day scheduling, and feel-first progress tracking.
Tap "Get Started" to begin onboarding
Try Quick Fit from the home tab
Schedule a rest day and see how it feels
Check the Progress tab for feel-first tracking
Interactive · Tap to explore
69%
of fitness apps are abandoned within 90 days, worse than the average across all app categories. (NIH, 2024)
71%
of users are gone by month three. Most quit the moment they miss their first target. (Dr. Muscle, 2024)
SDT
Intrinsic motivation is the strongest predictor of long-term exercise adherence. Not streaks or leaderboards. (Teixeira et al., 2012)
The Problem
People are not failing fitness.
Fitness apps are failing people.
Everyone already knows they should work out. The barrier is not knowledge, it is the apps. Guilt from missed days compounds into avoidance. Metric dashboards create anxiety. Rigid schedules do not fit irregular lives.
01
Shame loops
Missing one goal made users feel they had already failed. All-or-nothing thinking was the most cited reason for quitting.
02
Time as a wall
"I don't have time for a full workout" came up in nearly every interview. No app treated a 10-minute option as a first-class feature.
03
Metric overload
Users tracked steps and calories but wanted to feel progress, not manage a spreadsheet. Raw data dumps were demotivating.
"I stopped using it when I missed three days in a row. The streak was gone and it felt like I had already failed, so why bother?"
Interview Participant, 29, Marketing Manager
The Design
Three pillars. One mission.
Every product decision traces back to one idea: fitness is already hard. The app should not make it harder.
⚡
Quick Fit
When you cannot make the gym, Quick Fit builds a workout from whatever is nearby: a chair, a backpack, a doorframe. Doing something always beats doing nothing, and the app means it.
😴
Rest Days Built In
Rest days are scheduled, not missed. They appear on the home screen as a planned item. No streak penalty. No guilt. Taking a rest day feels intentional.
🎯
Goal-First Onboarding
The app asks your goal before anything else. It does not prescribe, it asks. From screen one, the experience is shaped around you.
📈
Feel-First Progress
Weekly reviews ask how you feel and reflect it back with language that builds you up, not benchmarks you against an ideal.
Figma Designs
The screens. Designed in detail.
Eight screens from the Avocado Fitness app, designed in Figma. Each one grounded in a research finding.
avocado-screen-onboarding.png
avocado-screen-home.png
avocado-screen-workout.png
avocado-screen-quickfit.png
avocado-screen-quickfit-detail.png
avocado-screen-restdays.png
avocado-screen-motivation.png
avocado-screen-muscle.png
Process
Research first. Wireframes second.
Self-Determination Theory, the habit loop, and 9 user interviews grounded every decision before a single wireframe was drawn.
01
Research
9 interviews, 25+ literature reviews. Key themes: shame loops, time barriers, need for personalization, privacy over sharing.
02
Audit
8+ competitors mapped for patterns and gaps. Found clear whitespace: metric-light, rest-positive, flexibility-first.
03
Design
Every pattern justified by a finding. Quick Fit, scheduled rest days, feel-first progress each trace back to an interview or paper.
04
Test
Prototype tested via Maze with 6 participants. Iterated on Quick Fit entry and rest day scheduling from task completion data.
User Testing
Lo-fi first. Assumptions checked.
Paper sketches and lo-fi wireframes were tested before any visual design was locked in. Three rounds surfaced friction I would have missed on screen.
Design System
Built from the app. Token to component.
Every color, type scale, and component in the prototype traces back to a decision about motivation psychology or dark-mode legibility.
Color Tokens
Primary / Action
#6aaa3a
Buttons · Active states · Progress indicators
Primary Pressed
#4e8a25
Button press state · Dark variant
Type Scale · Poppins
Set your goal and the app shapes itself around you. No defaults. No assumptions.
Components
Selection Card
Weight Loss
Gradual · Sustainable
Muscle Gain
Progressive · Strength
List Cards
Quick Fit · 10 min
Bodyweight · No equipment
Rest Day
Scheduled · No guilt
Filter Pills
Strength
Cardio
Yoga
HIIT
Bottom Navigation
Outcomes
Research-backed. User-validated.
9+
User interviews shaping every core design decision
25+
Peer-reviewed papers grounding the design in behavioral science
8+
Competitors audited to find the gap nobody was filling
What I Learned
The best decisions were what to leave out.
Every streak mechanic rejected, every shame pattern removed, every metric stripped back. When you understand why a pattern works for human motivation, you have the confidence to say no to things that would undermine it. Avocado Fitness is as much defined by what it does not have as what it does.
