Interviews
Field research
Insights
Brand positioning
Competitive analysis
Naming
User personas
Moodboard
Logo exploration
Brand identity
Information architecture
Wireframing
User testing
Usability testing
Visual design
Prototyping
Approximately 80% of U.S. women, aged 18 to 30, don’t like their bodies. 50% of women use unhealthy behaviors to control their weight.
The National Eating Disorders Association
We live in a society where unrealistic and unhealthy body ideals are highly valued, leading to poor body image. This contributes to the development of eating disorders, depression, anxiety, relationship issues, substance abuse, and other health problems. Powerlifting is a sport that focuses on strength—not aesthetics—and requires proper nutrition to fuel the body.
Barbellona is a powerlifting gym with on-site and online coaching services that get lifters stronger not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Unlike traditional gyms, Barbellona is above all a tight-knit community targeting female athletes who are recovering from negative body image, eating disorders, or other mental illnesses and want to use powerlifting as a platform to get better.
The Barbellona mobile app helps users reach their goals by tracking their workouts and mood, analyzing their strength progress, managing their training program, connecting with other members and coaches, and practicing self-care.
UX designer
Visual designer
Brand strategist
Sketch
InVision
I started by interviewing female powerlifters, coaches, patients, therapists, and body positive advocates to better understand the daily challenges of training while recovering from negative body image.
I also observed how powerlifters train at the gym and identified pain points. One of the biggest frustrations that lifters had was viewing and tracking their programs via cluttered spreadsheets on their phone while at the gym:
Lifters have to zoom in on Google Sheets or an image, struggling with cognitive overload, to figure out their training program for each session.
I organized all the research findings, identified key themes, and created insight statements to define opportunities for design.
Powerlifters don’t like going to commercial gyms because they:
Lifters recovering from negative body image have difficulty training due to:
Lifters with online coaches use their phones at the gym to jump between several apps:
In order to understand the current gym market in San Diego and identify opportunities, I created a matrix that plotted competitors’ sense of community against quality of equipment.
I analyzed the top competitors to further identify opportunities. Powered by insights from the research phase I determined that a mobile app would be the best solution to help powerlifters train while also empowering them to improve their body image.
I explored Latin and Greek names and words due to their connotations of power and strength. Discovering that Bellona is the ancient Roman goddess of war was a delightful surprise.
To inform all design decisions I created personas based on two types of users: powerlifters coached on-site and powerlifters coached online.
I wanted the logo to embody the power and boldness of the brand so my approach was to utilize the negative space in an impactful way.
Inspired by Bellona, the ancient Roman goddess of war, the Barbellona brand adopts this metaphor of resilient warriors using barbells to battle against all negative societal attitudes towards women. The Roman virtues of tenacity, courage, and valor drive the look and feel, empowering lifters to train hard and become better versions of themselves every single day.
The palette has a powerful, adaptive, and balanced look. Typography is big and bold. Images of athletes are never altered to remove so-called “flaws.” Tying it all together, the brand’s core values of strength, community, and self-love craft meaningful experiences throughout every touchpoint.
Primary logo
App icon
Colors
Typography
Values
Strength
Community
Self-love
Key adjectives
Bold
Powerful
Raw
Feisty
Energetic
Supportive
Photography
After creating a prioritization matrix to define the features that would fulfill both personas’ needs, I designed the app’s structure to make it simple and intuitive to navigate.
I rapidly tested a low-fidelity paper prototype with users to validate the initial concept of the mobile app.
Upon opening the app, the user would see an overview of her workout and a CTA to start. This design decision was based on feedback that the training feature is most important. After a brief self-care check-in the user would go through every set programmed by her coach concurrent with a weight plate calculator and ability to record form check videos.
I conducted usability testing with two lifters, which provided valuable feedback for multiple rounds of design iterations.
