App Review during COVID-19: Workout for Women by 7M
It is the seventh week that I am experiencing “Shelter-in-Place” here, while I am gradually learning to enjoy my new norm of work-life mingling, I think of writing special App Review Series about those mobile apps I use frequently during COVID-19 and after.
I decided to start with the one I use almost everyday —
Workout for Women by 7M
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Here is the Background…
During the 1st week when I was told my beloved Crunch got to be temporarily shut down due to policy, I could not help but felt anxious. As an amateur workout girl who used to go to the gym three times a week to release stress before COVID-19, I have no choice but to seek an alternative.
I got no bench press, no dumbbells, not even a jump rope in my newly rented apartment. So what do I do? I need an app that I can use to workout at home without equipment. And I found one.
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User Targeting
From the App name, it is clear that it’s a fitness app designed for women. If we try to sub-categorize the audience, my hypothesis is that this App is designed for professional women aged 20–40. On App Store, one of its claimed value proposition is to keep people fit by practicing the App 7 minutes a day. Even you are the busiest executive woman, you got to have the time to try it out. On another note, I also notice this App provides exercise options including stretch, yoga, and deskercise, which are popular among office ladies.
Why do I download it in the first place?
When I searched in the App Store, the keyword I used was home workout. This app ranked fourth with score of 4.8 by 346k reviews. I typically pay attention to those Apps ranked from 2nd to 5th. And this App appealed to me because of its emphasized design and focus on women.
I had experience working out in several gyms across Asia and California Bay Area, often I notice that most of the gym equipment design seems to based on men’s body shape, especially those for muscle strength training, such as chest pushers or biceps exercisers.
In addition, I need an app that I can do both strength training and stretch; and the variety of workouts options within this App stand it out.
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Product Features
On its App preview page, it summarizes its characteristics as below:
- Easy to use for beginners
- No equipment needed (you still need a good yoga mat though)
- Full voice and video instructions available
- Integrate-able with other health apps to track progress
- Customized fitness program designed by trainers (for subscription)
I will share my experience of these features below.
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Product Design
As a minimalist, I really appreciate the UI design of this app.
Bottom navigation bar directs you to the five tabs.
- Today (a specific page for today’s quote & 7M program)
- Workouts
- Programs
- Progress
- Settings
What I notice in the first place: there are no pop up ads at the front page! How amazing! (later I discover the ads are hidden within exercise instruction page and you only see it if you start to do workout. Still worth a praise.)
Another interesting part about this App is that there is no registration process, which is quite different from similar Apps in this category. As a millennial, I am so used to the thing called “sign up” whenever I try a new application. I need to either login via Facebook or Gmail, or register via an email address.
There is no such “sign up” in this App. It is a pure workout App, not a gym membership App, nor a social exercise group App.
As a result, I don’t need to share my data; I can focus my own workout and track my own progress. As someone who got frequently asked by clients about data privacy and security, this App definitely made it trouble free. Of course, you can still choose to input your BMI, and nobody will know it.
We live in a social society, but fitness can be personal.
Now let’s talk about the real deal: workouts provided in this App. As up till now: there are 116 workouts options in the current version, all free!
They are divided into categories. You can manually search for keywords, or you can choose a focus area(abs, back, arms, shoulders, legs etc). Besides muscle training, there are stretch, aerobic, yoga, or HIIT too. I even found a sub-category called “No-Jumping” (the App clear knows about the poor sound insulation of American apartments). Each option also marks difficulty level of high, medium and low. You can choose to mark your favorite workouts so its easier to pick up the next time. It is different from the general APP that only does high school, low school to classify sports,
The variety and customization distinguishes it from the big pool of fitness mobile Apps. At last, who doesn’t love to try a new workout every week?
Each workout training contains 7 to 15 exercises. In between each exercise, you have 15 seconds of rest time (I discovered later that I can adjust this rest time in settings to fit my own habit). There will be tips and video instruction for each exercise. I only discovered these tips recently. They are actually very useful, but unfortunately they are not included in the voice coach, which is definitely something I would like to hear my coach saying in the next version, e.g. “Yumin, do you feel your abs burning? if so, put your knee down a little.”
During the exercise, there is music together with voice coach’s instructions. You can pause or skip any exercise in the middle. And you can also adjust music volume. It is not yet possible to choose music by yourself, but I believe this feature would be up in the future versions. The coach will prompt you during half-time and the final countdown. After practicing for some time, you don’t need to look at the mobile phone anymore, and you can complete the workout smoothly by following the instructions from the coach. When a session is completed, there is a brief summary showing total duration and calories burned. You could also track your historical workouts results in the progress tab. I personally think there are way more interesting visualization we can apply to present a more comprehensive report for users.
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User Experience
Overall, I will rate it 8 out of 10 from my own experience.
From a training perspective, there are four types of training that I use most often (Abs, chest, stretch, arm). Among them, I love the abs workout the most. After three weeks, I observe an obvious grow in my abdominal muscles. (this also exposed my lacking in rigor while at the gym. . .)
From the mobile application experience, I favor two things:
- Advertising approximately equal to 0,
- Training diversification and customization
The feature that I look forward to the most in the next version is the voice coach. As I shared, this is a feature that can go beyond imagination. If it can become more personalized, such as adding multiple voice prompts, pitch and tone options (bass, baritone, tenor), it has the power to create an significant immersive one-on-one training experience.
Summary: improvement suggestions (UI/UX)
- Enrich the voice coach instruction.
- Allow user to customize the exercise duration and combination.
- Add modules to support before and after-training experience (such as nutritional support).
- Customize workouts music.
- Provide results visualization.
- Plus social activities as option.
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This is my first article on Medium. I didn’t expect myself to write such long. Over the years, fitness practice brings me a lot of joy and makes me more self-disciplined.
Today ‘s review is purely based on my own experience using the App over the last three weeks. Everyone ’s workout habit would be different; so if you have different opinion after using it, feel free to comment!
Happy workout!
