Community Fitness Booking System made easy

Project Overview

Project Type

Personal project (self-initiated improvement of an existing app)

Timeline

2 weeks

Scope

Search flow in the booking process

Role

Solo designer — user research, competitive analysis, wireframing, high-fidelity design, prototyping, and user testing

The Brief

This was a personal project — as an existing user, I was familiar with real pain points in the app. The goal was to train my UX muscles while validating whether other users experienced similar issues.

The Goal

“Find the biggest pain points of search flow in the booking process and help users get what they want by solving them.”

Process — Double Diamond

Discover — User Interviews

5 participants total: 2 working adults (20s–30s, tech industry, occasional users) and 3 informal street interviews — 4 uncles aged 50s–60s who play badminton, 2 guys in their 20s, and 1 mom in her 40s playing table tennis.

Interview Questions

• What activities do you do in Active SG?
• How is the process like?
• Show me how you book facilities
• Why do you do it that way?
• Areas needing improvement?
• How would you like it to be?

Key Findings

• Regular users skip search, preferring “Near me” or “My favourites”
• Search flow is most needed by occasional/social players across different areas
• Critical factor: finding a facility of specific sport availability on the date and time users want
• 4 out of 5 interviewees played badminton or swimming
• 5 out of 5 already knew their sport before booking
• 1 out of 5 noted difficulty with sports requiring many participants

Side Notes

Sports keyword proved more useful than venue. The current app showed all Singapore venues, which was overwhelming — recommendation: prioritize sport selection first.

Competitive Analysis

Studied sports apps plus e-commerce and audio services to understand industry-standard search practices — learning that features varied based on the type of search experience and what users expect from search flows.

Define

Findings were synthesized into a clear problem definition, plus a set of “good to have” ideas to revisit later.

Develop — Wireframing

Explored multiple screen variations for search activities, options, and results — testing different numbers of search fields, sorting/filtering options, and result layouts.

1st Iteration Features

• Explore section with different sports
• Sport categories for selection
• Three search fields (Sports, Location, Date)
• Tile/Grid view options
• Multiple filters (distance, facility types, characteristics)
• Calendar showing all dates without horizontal scroll, indicating unavailable dates
• Time-based availability display (not court-by-court)
• Map view for intuitive location browsing

2nd Iteration Changes (based on user testing feedback)

• Font changed from Avenir to Open Sans for aged users with vision difficulties
• Explore section removed; reverted to “My fav” and “Near me”
• Three search boxes consolidated into a single search bar
• Categories removed — no positive impact, didn't match the app theme
• Last booked facilities added
• Sort removed — only distance available, applied by default
• Locations grouped by region instead of alphabetically
• Booking page with date picker and calendar
• Badminton view shows time slots rather than courts

Final Prototype & Learnings

“As I actually use the Active SG mobile app, I always had pain points and areas I would like to fix. But I was missing something important, which was to validate those pain points with multiple users.”

The app's diverse persona base of local Singapore residents required scope definition to separate relevant pain points — and the importance of getting all feedback before going into fixing mode with my own bias.

Next steps: continue with usability testing and iteration, and explore other app sections for a more holistic experience improvement.