Target Audience Feedback

Feedback from target audience participants was both unexpected and helpful in the construction of this final project.  The feedback received affected the development of the following project components:

Rating System
All participants indicated that they prefer to read reviews and ratings by others but had little interest in rating and reviewing the apps themselves.  Based on this finding, the project was altered to eliminate account setup and input of reviews or ratings.  Instead, users will only read app reviews and ratings instead of signing in to provide their own input.

 Additional Feedback
Some target audience participants indicated that they weren’t interested in the Facebook feed.  Based on this finding, the Facebook feed will be replaced with links to the app stores that target audience participants typically go to when downloading apps.

Activities
The most popular activities noted as favorites by target audience participants included:

  • Running
  • Cycling
  • Swimming

This may be due to the fact that the target audience participants were all triathletes, however, these are still likely to be the most popular activities because many people who participate in exercises or competitive racing would be runners, cyclists, or swimmers.  Based on these findings, the majority of the mobile apps reviewed will be related to these types of activities.

Primary Device Operating System
The most popular operating system for target audience participants’ primary devices  was the Android OS.  This was followed by Apple’s iOS.  Based on this finding, the majority of the mobile apps reviewed will be for Android and iOS devices.

Fitness Level
The average fitness level of target audience participants was rated as ‘4.’  This is likely not very representative of a larger audience since target audience participants were triathletes and have been training for more than three years.  No changes will be made to the project based on these findings because the audience was not large enough to form a true representation of most fitness participants.  It’s more likely that mobile users who are seeking app solutions for training are looking for products that can help them with their existing training plan.  For this reason, the project will focus on finding and reviewing apps that would meet all fitness levels, but focus heavier on more active participants.

Most Important Features

The target audience participants rated the following three features as most important compared to other features listed:

  • Search titles
  • Filter by operating system
  • Filter by activity/exercise type

Based on these findings, the project will certainly include the functionality necessary to allow participants to search fitness-related apps by their title.  In addition, users will be able to save filter options and only display apps that work with their chosen operating system.  Lastly, the filter options will also allow users to filter their activity/exercise type.

Summary
This exercise was incredibly helpful and useful in formulating a final project prototype.  The feedback received provided a lot of insight and had a significant impact on the construction of this project.