Treat muscles and fitness like stocks.
#CaseStudy
A tale of two Athledos
Most developed products rarely end up how they were originally envisioned, but the journey toward that end product, with all of its twists and turns and reiterations, is integral to the end result. The tech space is filled with these product stories, showcasing how the journey itself shapes and moulds, sometimes serendipitously.
Athledo is one such product story. It started out as a collegiate sports management and analytics platform, which was tailored to the needs of team coaches, but in the end it transformed into an entirely new application for entry into the gym sphere.
Project Background
Imagine you are a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) coach. Your job is to teach, instruct, and train athletes. Your relationship with your athletes and team is what maximizes their performance. You have tools to help facilitate your unique insight and direction, but only if they don’t slow you down. You don’t have time to amalgamate spreadsheets, manually collect workout data, and chase after athletes and siloed data.
Figure 1: Rowing Coach’s Data shouldn’t exist in silos.
Your job is to make sure your athletes win by maximizing the athletic potential of those entrusted to you. This is why you need Athledo: Athledo connects your data so you can win with insight. Now you can focus on the the most important part of coaching - your direct involvement with the athlete, and never worry again about your data aggregation skills.
Athledo was an idea derived from a passion for sports and software that made its way into an Angel Investment Fund for Rowers, which was spearheaded by the top donor for UPenn and Yale. As former NCAA athletes, and current coaches, we had seen and experienced the kaleidoscope of problems to solve. At Athledo, we started with rowing coaches pain points, but shortly realized we would need to solve the pain points of the athletes as well, simultaneously.
Mission
Athledo is a cloud-based sports analytics app, which simplifies the management of core activities for coaches and collegiate/high school athletes, including:
Team & Roll
I was part of a small (but mighty) startup team, comprised of my long-time friend and former heavyweight oarsman Kalhan Koul (business) and a mutual colleague from Penn, Michael Tate (software).
I handled everything and anything to do with design! I was born to build, and feel nothing improves a product more than direct one on one contact with the primary users.
Preliminary Research
We all shared the same experience as NCAA oarsmen yearning for simpler digital solutions to help facilitate peak athletic performance. Years later, we were high school coaches with the same pain points that persisted from our rowing days.
We had a unique, fresh insight from both sides of the fence. We needed to find out if our problems were the same at the competitive level.
We met with our former coaches, current NCAA coaches, Ivy league athletes, and olympians. For those across Canada and the US that we couldn’t meet with in person, we called. We developed meaningful and interesting dialogues with dozens of coaches. We leveraged every contact we could within the world of high-level rowing.
Our findings were exactly as expected -- these athletes echoed our disdain with the inefficient management of their performance information. As athletes adopted more digital methods of tracking their performance, the gap widened and a greater disparity with coaching methods developed. A sport like rowing is steeped in tradition, and this is no exception when it comes to rowing.
Problem Framing
COACHES
“Can’t search paper,” says the assistant coach.
Has to sift through emails, texts, and paper submissions of erg tests, workout logs, scheduling conflicts for students.
ATHLETES
FUTURE COACHES & ATHLETES
Figure 2: Excerpt from Athledo Two Pager informative PDF
Prototyping
Starting with a Client
Taking a page from the lean startup, we built our MVP alongside our first customer, the University of Pennsylvania.
We would test new additions and product modifications on our High School Girls Rowing team, which was coached by Kalhan, and polished it up based on feedback before pushing the updates on UPenn.
This implementation and methodology allowed us the to remain lean, test ideas on a lower stakes client, while being solid with a top tier real world customer, and validate the product all at the same time. Not to mention get insight into the target market ahead of time. UPenn was an invaluable resource.
Sketching
Once we validated our initial product road map, I dove into sketching to design the UX/UI for the coaches. I kept in mind that the majority of our users would not be technically savvy but were familiar with finances. Less was more, so email was the complexity bar with data visualization seen in online stocks. Everything at a glance, no hidden menus, no digging, and no pages. “One page to rule them all.”
We started with a web page as opposed to an app because most, if not all of our coaches wanted large screens and did not want their phone to be their primary coaching tool. They did mentioned they used their phones for video.
Visual Design
Email had trained most of our users and done the hard work for us. Emulating the flow of email, I took a gmail for business and a Google Apps for Work approach to allow custom branding across the Athledo Platform.
It was important to have the University Emblem and even colours present throughout the design, so a neutral non-distracting palette was needed. During the design process I would toggle between UPenn’s colours and Princeton University.
I usually don’t spend much time sketching with a pen and paper because I feel like going to a design app right away is more efficient. I try to go mid or high-fi very quickly so that when I present my work, people can envision my ideas much easier. I often go back to the whiteboard when I work with other designers because that’s how we communicate.
Final Product
COACHES
The coach’s experience starts with the dashboard overview of his team's activity. The coach can at-a-glance see where he needs to shift his attention. From recent workout activity, coloured indicators on the miniature calendar of “who’s busy?” to the latest announcement from the assistant coach and who has viewed it.
Our initial builds and designs had to be scaled back in complexity to keep up with the speed in which we were implementing changes. We had to revert to a more basic look on the webapp to reduce costs and bugs.
ATHLETES
Athletes hate paper and that's not a problem because anything they can do on a desktop, they can do on their phone. They can take their assigned workouts into the gym with them, submit erg training data on the spot, and discuss on the fly.
First Place Pitch
In early 2014, a recently created Angel Investment Fund for Rowers reached out to us to pitch them. The fund was managed by the top donor for the rowing programs at University of Pennsylvania and Yale university. At the time of the invitation, we had been working together for 4 months, contacted nearly every university rowing coach on the east coast across two countries, countless athletes, and two olympic teams. By sheer tenacity we were able to garner this awesomely timed opportunity. We met in White Plains, New York. Our pitch went so well that we had $50,000 to put toward Athledo’s development, and a subsequent $20,000 after that, totalling $65,000 by the end of 2014.
Needless to say it was an ecstatic train ride back to our hotel in New York. We celebrated with pizza later that night.
Launch
Success Metric
After the majority of the application was developed, we did a closed Beta launch with University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown Day High School. Over the next of couple months we reached out and gave free trials to numerous Universities in the United States and Canada. Over that year we received organic (solicitation free) demand from rowing clubs and high school teams as far as Australia, all from the power of positive word of mouth. Our success metric during this phase was the number of schools that we converted over to our app and the amount of teams we can capture data on, per user, daily.
Data Driven Design Decisions
By working with Bug Herd were able to monitor exactly how the users were interacting with the application, at scale, and without the need to watch over their shoulder. This gave me a lot of user interaction data to make design decisions and allowed Coaches & Athletes to self report any issues quickly and direct from inside Athledo.
Looking Forward
I think Nikki Durkin of 99dresses said it best, "Over 90% of tech startups fail, but I never thought my baby...would be one of them.” Most startups fail despite traction, paying customers, active users, and a talented team. We did many things right but we had to make a hard decision for us and, more importantly, for our customers. We closed down shop and informed our customers we would shut down the servers in a year. We gave them our eternal gratitude, and the team disbanded out into the “real world.” Kalhan is pursuing his MBA at MIT Sloan School of Management , Mike received his J.D. at Cornell Law School, and I went to University of Western Ontario to pursue Ivey Business School.
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."
I loved working on Athledo. It was an emotional rollercoaster but I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world. I’m excited for my next venture and what the future holds.
Fast Forward nearly 2 years
I’ve been working on a side project in my free time called App·thlete. It is a workout tracker, training and supplement log for experienced bodybuilders, weightlifters, fitness and strength fanatics. 🏋🏻
Any idea worth its salt deserves a good pivot, and who could let such an awesome domain name expire (uber being a great example of an domain repeatedly exchanging hands.) 🦄
App·thlete became Athledo and Athledo’s great name had a new home.🏡
I took it upon myself to take the lessons, notes, and hopes of the first iteration of Athledo and reinvent it in a familiar way. A way that appealed to me, that built upon what I’d learned, and a way that allowed me to flex my creative muscle.💪🏻
What is Athledo 2.0?
You’re a bodybuilder of sorts. You take your fitness seriously, your life revolves around when you can train next, you eat for results not pleasure, and you have friends that take steroids.
When you train at the gym it's not a lifestyle choice, you’re not counting down the minutes to the end of your workout; rather, you’re already thinking about what you’ll train tomorrow. It's a compulsion and you love it; each rep, each set, and how can you improve.
So why is it the only apps out there aren’t for people like you? The hardcore, those that refute mediocrity?
Parable: Stocks
Stock Trading applications don’t teach you how to trade, don’t ask you to make a trade to maintain an active trading lifestyle, and they certainly don’t hold your hand. They don’t do these things because it's a waste of your time and theirs. Stocks are for the financially savvy, those that don’t screw around, they’re there for a purpose - GAINS.
Athledo is the Wall Street for your fitness - the muscle rich, and only the strong survive. The rich get richer and poor get fatter.
Mission
Treat muscles and fitness like stocks.
Workout tracker, training and supplement log for experienced bodybuilders, weightlifters, fitness and strength fanatics. Track your progress over time by treating your workouts as stock portfolios. Real-time supplement data, and smart notifications to help you make the most of your supplements no matter what you take. Build your routines, explore workout data, and experience the future of training.
Preliminary Research
Coming from a collegiate athlete background, I had interviewed and spoken with nearly a hundred top tier athletes previously, including some professionals. I followed up with many to see where they were now athletically.
Some had retired to everyday 9-5 life, but the majority had taken those years of athletic prowess and repurposed them like a good pivot. A pattern emerged and it required exploration and research.
I had a unique, fresh, and perhaps even unseen vantage point, which few might ever come across or even realized. I had become more immersed in the gym scene, an indoctrinated “bro” if you will, and with such indoctrination came incredible access to first hand experience & knowledge.
I met with former NCAA athletes, CIS (NCAA of Canada), and Olympians from across the US & Canada. On top of that I met with many personal trainers, bodybuilders, powerlifters, and fitness coaches ranging from enthusiast, amateur, and those in the IFBB Professional League. Not everyone came from a high athletics background, but they all ended up in the same place - their local gym.
My findings showed that most of these collegiate athletes who didn’t make it to the professional world turned their training habits and physical drive toward the gym. These were men and women who had been indoctrinated for years into the life of an athlete and many of them turned to the fitness and figure competitions.
The most interesting finding wasn’t the level of steroid use (which is much higher than anticipated even amongst casual gym goers), but the lack of applications used in the gym. Next to none were using a fitness oriented application and of those that were used what could be considered a glorified notepad (simple workout app) or some sort of calorie counter.
After an indepth look of the top 100 IFFB Pro instagrams, websites, and other media, showed not a single app being used in videos, visible in photos, or even referenced other than the occasional paid advertisement, which were almost always deleted afterwards.
I didn’t limit my research to the athletically blessed, but to average people too. Those who would only train in a class, those who were in the gym simply to improve their health, as well as soccer moms and dads. To ensure the greatest spread of opinions I posted myself several evenings at the front of my 3 closest gyms (after the general manager was gone) and posed as an employee to ask my questions.
I found that apps were predominantly used for running and general calorie counting, with little to no active thought for diet. I found that baby boomers loved fitbits for its simplicity, and came across 3 smartwatches in which case the owner did not pay attention to heart rate monitor or use any watch apps.
Of the 18-34 age group, I did come across some users of fitness apps but they were handholding apps which had visual explanations of what to do and how to do it. These were all usually new members. Many others reported trying apps but shelved them after a week. They were not my demographic but one day they could be. This only confirmed what I had already known.
All of these findings coupled together with the more recent boom and constant rise of fitness related “everything” signals to me an immense opportunity.
Problem Framing
No fitness applications for the hardcore and initiated (instagram doesn’t count.)
Enthusiast
(gym rats and @_fit chicks)
Bodybuilders, Powerlifters, Fitness and Figure Competitors
(+ former high level athletes)
Professional Bodybuilders & Powerlifters
(earning income/sponsored + recognized national title.)
Prototyping
Markovian Lists & Chains
I always start with a legal pad and pencil. Making lists and diagrams trying to solve one, or a set of problems as I work my way out (middle out) towards a perfect world scenario. The perfect world scenario allows for a full scope vantage point of your solution so you can scale it back to the bare essentials while anticipating the future.
My lists and diagrams end up becoming very Markovian as I chain, isolate, and organize various aspects into one simple solution.
Inspiration
“Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal.”
I started the project by scouring the wild web and app stores for the best solutions to each aspect of my solution. All of these visualized notes created an in-depth moodboard of the type of design, look and feel of the future app.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Don’t reinvent the wheel, improve upon it! I isolate each individual component of apps I believe to have elegantly solved a problem. Be it something small like the design of a button to an entire user interface. The purpose is not to steal but to create one cohesive jalopy so that I can refine, evolve, and see holes. For Athledo, there were more holes than solutions out in the wild so this was mainly designing from scratch (indicative of an fun and challenging project.)
Visual Design
The visual design was simple, clean, and free of distraction. That sounds trite but doesn’t mean it’s not true. The app needed to flow like water (Bruce Lee), it needed to have natural light (Muscle Beach), and it needed to have a colour of strength (Goku). I really liked the font Proxima Nova used from the previous iteration of Athledo so I kept it.
I really wanted to drive home the idea of efficiency with the Athledo design and, as an avid day trader, I’m all about efficiency of time. Any steps that can be removed, I was going to remove them. I also loved the binary approach of stock trading platforms. Less their design but their spirits in the sense of no-handholding. You either traded properly or you lost all your money. No one taught you what to do, you entered the “arena” when you were ready to test your might.
Most applications catered to those trying to get into the gym or to the simplest of fitness, running. Everything else was a shot at the sun that landed in the dark voids of space -- completely off target. This Athledo was for the initiated, the proven, and the hardcore. No lessons needed, emulate muscle memory (no calculations required + autopilot), and the speed of sliding on and off a barbell plate.
The Hand Off
Phase One
The original scope of the athledo application had to be scaled down by ⅔. Though it can be heart wrenching to have to cut things out it's a lot easier (and cheaper!) to remove something before production and add it in later, rather than to build everything at once only to break things in the future trying to remove them. One of the great aspects of collaboration is perspective, experience, and feedback.
Build & Learn
Working alongside a developer is a godsend (anyone who has had to develop overseas understands). The proximity is hard to quantify, but believe me it's a night and day difference for the better. I was able to get constant feedback from the development team and quickly iterate based on their points. Not all solutions work as imagine on paper or virtual prototype but the collaboration made sure that the designs I was creating were actually going to get built pixel by pixel.
Soft Launch
The gym is a sophisticated ecosystem with many intricacies within this urban wilderness. Athledo is currently in the hands of selected Bodybuilders, Powerlifters, Fitness and Figure Competitors. With more AB testing, refinement, and user feedback insight it will open to greater public use.
Selected Works
Uhber | Ultimate HomepageCase Study
Athledo | Athletes DomainCase Study
