Drive Interactive: A groundbreaking device that’s designed to replace the gym
The Company
Flexline is a California-based sports tech startup supporting professional trainers in gyms all across the U.S.
After some initial success, they launched a new company to create a product that anyone can purchase and use at home.
Collaborating with an industrial design firm in Australia and utilizing Chinese manufacturers, they produced their first batch of Drive Interactive devices.
Users can schedule their workouts and gather statistics on their performance. The device saves a lot of time that would be spent going back and forth to the gym, while video content keeps users motivated and focused on their desired results.
The Challenge
Android TV resolution is totally different from regular web/mobile/tablet devices. The scale of user interface (UI) elements have to be tested and regular standard sizes don’t apply.
As with any other touch device, Android TV doesn’t have a cursor — so you can’t rely on hover states to give the user additional information. That makes things a bit more complicated, especially with a brand-new product. All UI elements have to be clear, simple, and self-explanatory.
Technology-wise, the Android TV UI works with the same database as the company’s website and company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system. So, we had to work closely with the marketing team to ensure a seamless user experience among all digital channels.
In a dynamic startup environment, directions and plans often change dramatically within a few hours. For this reason, we used an agile approach and worked in sprints.
To ensure a guaranteed workload for the development team, the design process had to be one to two months ahead of development.
The Approach
During each sprint, we worked on high-priority tasks that were later tested by a team of professional trainers and a group of users. We used the Sketch/InvisionApp bundle, allowing us to test prototypes before spending time and financial resources on coding.
After one to two rounds of iterations, the designs were passed on to the development team to implement. After a feature was coded, we worked with test groups in other cities to ensure we had chosen the right direction and that it worked properly.
The Results
Over a fairly short period of time, we managed to design and deploy a unique and perfectly working digital solution that was both easy and fun to operate.
We plan to continue working with Drive Interactive over the next year to improve and optimize each user’s experience.
With our friends and partners from Nevo Solutions, we also designed and coded the product website, as well as a series of landing pages.
