Prompt.
We always know that exercise is beneficial to our health. However, in reality, most of the population doesn't get enough exercise due to modern society's sedentary lifestyle. Research done by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in 2021 showed 42.4% of the US adult population was obese.
Problem.
When asked why not exercise more, many answered they couldn't find the time or motivation.
How can we design the exercise experience to be more motivating?
Solution.
Provide an alterative motivation by connecting physical activity to the livelihood of a living plant.
Too busy, bad weather, horrible traffic, these are common reasons that one might exuse themselves from exercising.
Planty is an app that ties physical exercise to the livelihood of a living plant by locking the plant in a terrarium and requiring the user to exercise to care for it. By doing so, Planty gives user an different reason for exercising.
The more physical exercise user do, the more resource user would gain, which would be use to care for the plant.
User will collect droplets of water and light as they exercise, which will activate the indicator and give more water and sunligt allowance for the user to care for the plant.
Droplets will fall from the top of the screen once user reaches a mini milestone, like 10 seconds of running.
Imagine This.
User can see livefeed of the plant and care for the plant from their phone.
When the Indicator turns grey, user can not care for the plant, meaning that the user don't have enough water and light.
User would have to exercise to activate the controls again.
The user can choose different workouts to activate the water and light indicator.
As the user continues to exercise over a few days, more physical activities will unlock.
If the user continuously skips workouts, user won't have resources to care for the plant, therefore, the plant will not receive water and light. It will slowly die.
So, Don't Kill Your Plant!
Exercise!
The Process.
Research.
The Numbers.
The Motivations.
Oftentimes, we decided we would start working out because we want to lose weight or desire better energy. However, while they are valid and logical reasons to start working out, they are the wrong motivation.
The rationale behind these reasons is logic, but motivations are emotional. When we workout because of logical reason, it turns exercise into something that we should do, rather than something that we want. Exercise then becomes a chore. It is very easy for other things, such as busy schedules or bad weather to get in the way.
So, What reasons work?
The Design.
Explorations.
The app design of Planty initially started like many other fitness apps that already exist. Soon I realize this design separated the plant from the user and wouldn’t cause empathy for the plant. It would still be a chore.
It also separated the plant, the user from the activity of physical exercise.
I later explored more metaphors that would connect the concept of plant and exercise better.
I also explored interaction via the app that could allow the user to empathize with the plant.
Iterations of the plant's resource rings.
Final Design.
The Interface design revolves around the idea that a plant would take nutrition from the roots, and physical exercise is nutrition.
The interface essentially serves as a mirror that reflects how the user is doing. The plant is the user’s reflection, how the plant is doing is how the user is doing.
The plant's resource ring Is divided into 3 sections: Resource Given, Resource Available, and Resource Needed.
The user can exercise to earn resources, but the user would still need to use the controller to give the resources to the plant. This is to strengthen the connection between the user and the plant, allowing the user to care more about the plant
The resource ring is also applied to the exercise interface user can watch their resource bar gets filled.
Droplets will drop every time user hits a mini milestone, like 5 calories
burned, or ran for 10 seconds. they are mini rewards and incentives
to keep the user going. because the goal of 5 more calories and 10 more
seconds is so much easier to achieve than running 30 mins.
The exercise interface also includes calorie count and duration, because many beginners would look at numbers. On the corresponding side, it ties the numbers
with the water and sunlight, further strengthening the idea of any
physical exercise is for the plant