My COVID-19 story: User research in complex times
By: Bruna Alves Maia
Tags: Ux Strategy, UX Research, Research Methods, UX, Research

2020 has been a year full of emotions for everyone, the high level of uncertainty that is surrounding us and messing up our plans and definitions of the world is just getting bigger. Of course, the world saw moments like this in the past, but it’s also true that is nothing like the specific terms of this current crisis. The fastness of the information, social media, and how this crisis impacts every human being makes the experience different and more intense.

In this scenario, researchers are super important and suddenly we got the opportunity of proving our value to the companies since researchers have the toolkit to understand complex systems, talk with relevant audiences, and to draw possible futures.

Companies with dedicated UX researchers come out ahead! And this case is about how I did the most complex research project in my career, the one that supported the transformation Gympass is facing, like other important business materials, development evaluation, and financial reports.

Gympass used to be a corporate benefit that connects users with a network of gyms and studios around twelve countries through their platform. Right now, in 2020, in the eye of the storm, Gympass is a wellness solution which provides a holistic approach of health, going beyond providing in-person access to gyms and studios (most of them closed due to the COVID-19) but connecting people to wellness apps in the market, live classes and personal trainer online sessions. An innovative shift that allows Gympass to keep the ecosystem running in these hard times while delivering value to fitness partners, clients, and end-users.

Going back to the research problem, the company had a question: What the future holds for our value proposition? Ok, we reinvented ourselves and expanded our product portfolio fast enough to adapt to the needs of the new world… but is this “new world” a permanent thing?

A lot of reports and news said that the lockdown and the COVID-19 changed the fitness industry forever and the post-pandemic would be more online driven and the traditional gyms and fitness platforms should get ready for a threatening customer mindset shift.

That sounds like a great research problem! And the challenge of cracking the future for Gympass, while the gyms reopening started to happen in European countries, was accepted!

For that, we hired a decentralized research team to get a better perspective of the local problems: we had a researcher in Germany, one in Italy, one in Spain and I personally covered Brazil and the USA. We targeted markets in the reopening process (European ones) and complex markets (BR and US) to run 50 in-depth interviews with users that tried our digital offers and with users that didn’t try any digital offers but also kept their memberships.

We also did an intercept survey on our logged experience with one single question focused on the user feeling: “Help us to understand what the future holds for physical activity after lockdown! Select the option that better describes you at the moment. “ and the options varied on a scale between “I want to go back to the gym in-person asap” till “I will keep my online routine even when the pandemic is over.”, passing for a comfortable option that said, “I honestly don’t know”.

Which leads to the first change in the research framework:

We often don’t put such open and abstract options on quantitative surveys, since it’s a method to get closed answers about user behavior. But we did because it was impossible to ignore the fact that people are not sure about the present and the future. The future is being redefined every second and the present is changing fast, so even if we did not include this option, our results will be reliable only for a couple of days.

Second turning point! How do you say to a stakeholder and for the senior leadership of the company that we don’t have all the answers and the research is more than ever a photograph of a moment? How will they make decisions based on that uncertainty?

For sure researchers never know everything and the main part of our job is to purpose questions and to open minds, but in this complex scenario, reinforcing this was more important than ever!

The first outcome came with a “holy sh*t! — everything is impacting the user’s routine with physical activity” — from school rules, government laws, health system to their employers’ decisions. And all of these things were hanging on the same level of uncertainty and changing very fast.

So I had to take two main decisions as a researcher:

I need one variable to trust

To support my analysis, we use the dataset to cross profile information with product usage (lifetime value, %classes, %sessions before the lockdown, and now with digital offers). That’s why it was so important to bring other research materials and data science to the project. In the end, we identified that the user profile had a direct impact on their relationship with our digital offers and their expectations with the gyms reopening.

2. Even with that variable, my framework of analysis had to be future-proof and timeline-based.

I used the “next, now, beyond” to propose tangible action points while providing a sense of reliability and urgency. This is not a framework I invented by myself, but I honestly can’t remember who did it, I used a lot during my time in Consumoteca.

“Solve the now, explore the next and imagine the beyond”

In the “now” session we had action points to improve the user experiences on a horizon of one semester. Initiatives on the user experience that should be prioritized, answers to more immediate questions about retention on digital offers and reopening transaction periods. A lot of them were already considered by the teams even before the research, so the research brought a sense of trust in our daily jobs and with the path that the company was taking.

In the “next” session we had action points to be explored in the next quarter but to be implemented in the medium-term (next year). It was about iterate research and this also generated a backlog for the UX Research team. If users are telling us that they will do this but the level of uncertainty is high, we need to keep exploring this from a behavioral perspective, not only in the attitudinal approach.

In the “beyond” session were ideas and opportunities that could strengthen the Gympass value proposition in a long term perspective, including user behaviors that will remain after the pandemic.

That’s another new in the research dynamic, I needed to combine foresight methodologies with traditional mapping methodologies during the entire project. We run surveys and conduct in-depth interviews but we need a foresight framework to analyze the results.

It was necessary to interpret the user’s speech to filter what was coming because of the uncertainty and what will remain.

For example:

We realize that the barriers to workout online were higher than to workout in-person and required more steps. But the users are saying that “working out online is so much easier! I will keep that forever.” or we have users saying that they’re “missing the gym instructor to teach me how to do the movements” but doing entire training programs by themselves using multiple tools.

We did a tarot deck with users' profile as an outcome, to make it easier to see the expectations with the gyms reopening variating from user profile during the lockdown. (And also to do a little joke with the futurology vibes of this project :p)

(@design.lucascanto illustrations using Bino Black's characters)

Reading between the lines and having an analytical mind are already requirements for researchers, but it was, again, more important than ever. Cracking these codes was necessary to guide the product vision and that’s what we did.

Besides that, I saw myself asking users if they’re ok and if their family members were safe before starting the interview and sometimes the answer was not the best one. I interviewed one nurse from Rio de Janeiro, dealing with protocols, high demand (and a lot of deaths too), long shifts every day and with no school open for her 9-year kid, but she was talking about how she was doing Zumba classes via Gympass platform to keep her sanity. Our emotions as researchers got balanced in a situation like this but you need to keep focus.

I also had a lot of no-shows from the recruited people, even paying a gift card as an incentive, like never before. What used to be 1 every 3 recruiters not showing up in research projects, suddenly came in, sometimes, 3 in 3 don’t show up. I strongly believe that it is hard to commit to online interviews if you’re at home with everything to hold up.

The research outcome was complex and it led me to 120 slides and six different clipping presentations directional insights to specific teams. The research was embraced by the company and I had vice presidents saying “now I refer your research to every decision I take” and C-levels helping to spread the words. I believe that’s because more than bringing answers, I brought questions. So my main lesson was that it’s ok to don’t know everything in these complex times. No one does! But it’s important to use research to frame what truly impacts our business and user needs and guide us somehow. Again: more than ever.

The future of Gympass is being written, with inputs from different departments — and you can follow this journey with us as we release new and improved experiences.

🔮 And for the fitness industry, check the behaviors will remain even after the gyms reopening:

#1 The industry will definitely not be the same as before, but there is still room for offline workouts. Online offers can provide social features but the experience won’t provide the same level of social interaction and that’s still a value for gym members.

#2 Users’ fitness profiles played a large part in what they expect from their workout experience. That means that the fitness background with physical activity is a determinant factor for a user’s relation with online and offline offers in a post-covid-19 scenario.

#3 Flexibility in life demands flexibility in fitness routines: that will be more travel, more countryside residents, more home-office, and more work flexibility. This means that omnichannel fitness that meets users where they are will be increasingly popular.

#4 Empowerment to work out is the main behavior that will remain after COVID-19 — people now have higher expectations for fitness products.

#5 Complex journeys demand guidance: products should guide users through their fitness routines and goals via a seamless user experience and assertive marketing.

#6 Fitness facilities need to think beyond access to a physical structure.

#7 We will see the demand for outdoor activities increasing more than ever.

#7 Activity driven decision: Online and on-site possibilities will really depend on the activity type.

But how about you, researcher? Did you also feel the complexity of knocking on the door? What’s your COVID-19 research history?

As a next step, we're running a survey for an extended universe to get more insights from different audiences.

Special thanks for Glauco Cavalheiro, Lucas Juliano, Lucas Canto, Kassem Mohamad, Catherina Godeghesi, Lena Thiele and Mari Carmen, they were essential for this research project.