OpenGym
Creating a platform to improve gym efficiency for CMU students.
As a CMU student, a problem that commonly pops up in our discussions are the crowded gym facilities at CMU. So, Product Studio (a branch of CMUBTG) set out to tackle this issue.
Role
Head of Product & Design
Duration
6 months (ongoing)
Tools
Figma
Google Suite
♜ Overall Problem Space
Gym facilities at CMU are often crowded, making working out and healthy habits hard to maintain.
This turns what should be a positive workout into a frustrating experience.
⚉ Solution Snapshot (Mobile)
With Open Gym, students can gather quick and detailed insight into busyness of gym facilities on campus.
Based on feedback from numerous CMU students and our own experiences, the CMU gym often feels overcrowded, turning what should be a positive workout into a frustrating experience.
☌ Discover: Researching CMU students
Our original view needed to be validated and explored through research, so we began the research process by interviewing 2 students formally, guerrilla interviewing 12 more students, and sending out a survey to students about their gym going process.
Q: What pieces of information do you wish you could obtain before heading to the gym that would enhance your experience?
A: "I want to know what machines are available, I just wanna hit abs man"
Q: What is the average time you spend waiting for a machine to become available during your workout?
A: "Sometimes you have to wait upwards of half an hour to get a bench or squat rack"
⛅︎ Interview Takeaways
From our interviews, we found:
Around 78% of surveyed students complain that the gym is always moderately to very busy at the time they go.
Insight 1
How can we represent when gym times are busy so traffic is reduced?
Over 90% of gym inflows are directed to the Cohon University Fitness Center.
Insight 2
We should prioritize the Cohon University Fitness Center first floor in our MVP.
Students who don't go to the gym often feel a sense of intimidation, especially for the first floor (where most of the weights are).
Insight 3
How can we reduce uncertainty and pressure for beginner gym-ers? Especially for the first floor?
⭐︎ Understanding our users from our research
How might we prioritize targeting certain insights to ensure both usability and developmental feasability?
There were three main things we wanted to focus on based on the user research:
Show busyness of gyms (proportion) [Insight 1& 3]
Provide general information about gym hours (opening and closing) and amenities [Insight 1& 3]
Show occupancy of specific machines on the first floor of Cohon University Center [Insight 2]
But because of this feasibility consideration we had to ask ourselves: what is in highest demand & easiest to accomplish?
⛅︎ Some notes on feasibility.
As we continued to question which had the easiest feasability, we had to ideate on the simplest way to execute the solution to some of these ideas.
Provide general information about gym hours (opening and closing) and amenities
Easy
Gather, design & code information from existing websites
Show busyness of gyms
Moderate
Ideate & gather information from CMU gym administrators. Design & code data.
Show occupancy of specific machines
Hard
Create physical system to keep track of machine occupancy, gather data, design & code.
✦ So ultimately,
Priority 1 (P0): How might we showcase the busyness of the Cohon University Center first floor in an easy and digestible way? [Insights 1 & 3]
Priority 2 (P1): How might we provide occupancy of specific machines in gym facilities?
? Starting ideation through an analysis of similar platforms.
We began by looking into other websites for checking occupancy of gym facilities for college gyms.
We reached out to a UC Berkeley Alumni, Nick Rose, who was involved in research and development of the occupancy project at UC Berkeley to discuss more about their implementation.
We decided to include a gym details page to provide more in-depth information while also reducing unfamiliarity of CMU gyms.
✎ Starting designs.
Throughout our sketches, our main visuals were to show occupancy in a very simple and easy way -- through a meter diagram and an occupancy forecast.
Our features were based around occupancy. But how could we get that data?
⚙︎ Technical Implementation: the largest blocker -- gathering data from CMU.
We continuously held meetings with CMU administrators to facilitate communication of what student data we could gather. From our conversations, we discovered there were two forms of data we could receive:
1. Manual head count data
2. Card swipe data
We decided to add a third to ensure as much data reliability as possible.
3. Bluetooth scanner data (physical bluetooth scanner)
There were also a few other considerations when it came to student data:
Security & Privacy
Automation and updating of data
Introducing OpenGym. Providing real time data of gyms on campus.
Login System Ensuring Security
To ensure security of student data, we established a login that goes through the two-step integration system before showing any sensitive data (ex: occupancy of gyms)
Detailed View of Each Gym
Quick snapshots of busy versus not as busy times, occupancy graph, and general amenities. Allowing for more detailed view of the gym to reduce gym intimidation and easier gym planning.
☀︎ Impact
We presented our project at the Google office in front of 4 product managers and 1 product designer. Gratefully, after the presentation, we got much praise, including this one!
"With this presentation, you all would pass the product manager interview at Google.” -Scott Bluman, PM at Google
This project is launched as of February 2025. We have a 95% data accuracy level and had over 80 users during our launch.
Check it out here! ↴ Note that you need a CMU email to login!
https://cmuopengym.com/
✈︎ Takeaway