OVERVIEW
Making Progress Visible to Maintain Intrinsic Motivation
Role
Product Designer
Team
2 Project Leads
1 Designer (me!)
8 Developers
2 Marketers
Timeline
Sept 2025 - May 2026
Skills/Tools
Figma
FigJam
CONTEXT
Staying on top of your physical health is hard as a student
As a student myself who has slowly stopped going to the gym throughout the semester because of academics, extracurriculars, social life, and wanting time to unwind, I know how hard it is to keep showing up to the gym and maintaining that motivation.
When I consistently went to the gym, I often checked Uplift, a Cornell fitness app that shows how full the gyms are and all the relevant fitness information. But what it was missing was a way for me to see my gym progress and feel rewarded for showing up which all play a part in keeping me motivated to show up consistently.
BUILDING ON PREVIOUS RESEARCH
Not having a way to see progress makes going to the gym harder than it should be.
What was making going to the gym harder than it should be for students was:
No reliable way to track their progress.
Students tracked in their head, used tools they ended up abandoning, or relied on looking in the mirror for changes.
No visible record of their consistency.
Students vocalized that streaks and goal tracking would motivate them more to go to the gym more consistently.
THE PROBLEM
How might we support students to find the motivation to consistently show up for their goals and improve their physical health?
THE SOLUTION
Maintaining motivation by making consistency and progress visible.
With User Profiles, students can set goals, log workouts, access their workout history, and streaks so that is easy to track their progress and be reminded of the work they’re doing so that they have that intrinsic motivation to improve their physical health.
FEATURES
Designing an organized system for tracking consistency and progress that’s also fun and emotionally satisfying.
Access your progress in your profile, not your memory
Your profile page shows your week in review. Being reminded of the times you went to the gym makes the next gym session feel more possible and motivating.
Every gym visit remembered
Tap any day to see when and where you showed up. No more wondering if you went to the gym one day.
The entirety of your gym history in one place
See your entire gym history in list view. No need to count on your memory to know when you started or how far you have come.
A fun and rewarding streaks experience by climbing the mountain
Every gym visit moves you closer to the top of the mountain. Once you reach the top, your streak increases.
This represents that showing up consistently, brings you closer to your health goals.
App Opening Loading Animation
The first thing students see when they open the app, so it needed to feel welcoming, convey the Uplift brand, and get them excited before they interacted with anything.
DESIGN DECISIONS
The process of designing a way to help students find motivation
Workout History: Making access to gym consistency easy
The goal was to provide all students with a way to easily visualize their gym progress and be able to see the details of their gym sessions.
The design I went ahead with pairs a calendar view with a list view so students can view their monthly consistency and overall consistency. Both views are tied with gym session details so it is easy to remember their consistency.
Iteration 1
A month of workouts but nothing more
Why NOT this one?
Users wont be able to see their consistency across months nor specific details about the gym session.
Able to see months gym attendance history easily
Unable to see details about gym session
Users have to tap through each month to see progress
Users cannot see all of their progress at once
Streaks: Designing for emotional motivation and function through visual fun
For Streaks my goal was to find a way to emotionally motivate students to continue going to the gym during the week and then maintaining that motivation after each week. The final design focused on a mountain metaphor to do this. Climbing towards the peak after each gym session taking students closer and closer to completing their personal gym goal and increasing their streak at the top.
Iteration 1
Follows the design system but isn’t unique
Why NOT this one?
Is not emotionally motivating nor feels like there will be a reward once you complete your weekly goal which won’t help with intrinsic motivation. It doesn’t convey the purpose of uplift and differentiate itself form other fitness apps.
Able to see gym attendance history
Clear textual context on how long users have been going to the gym
Design fits design system
Very similar to workout history design
Contextual confusion with what “You’ve been uplifting for 2 weeks” means
Hard to understand what streaks mean
Design can be boring for gym goers → not visually motivating
RESULTS
Increasing gym attendance at college
I stopped going to the gym because effort in academics, extracurriculars, and friends were easy to see the results of, but it wasn’t easy to see in the gym. After Profiles shipped, active users grew from 1.1k to 1.3k from Fall 2025 to Spring 2026.
However, I wouldn’t say that’s proof of the impact of Profiles. The timing of the release overlapped with students naturally returning to gyms after the end of classes and there’s no way to separate students having more free time for the gym from Profiles giving them a reason to return.
18%
*Take this metric with a grain of salt.
In order to separate the feature’s impact from seasonal changes, I want to compare gym attendance between students who created a profile to those who didn’t next semester.
REFLECTION
Don’t restrict yourself and don’t be afraid to ask
Don’t restrict yourself and allow yourself to experiment.
Narrowing myself to what I saw online resulted in blockers. Allowing myself to freely experiment with the streaks feature allowed me to work faster, be more creative, and end up with a feature that is more enjoyable to use.
Don’t be afraid to ask a ton of clarifying questions.
There was pressure being the main designer on the team and I thought asking too many questions would show I didn’t know what I was doing. But that just stands in the way of efficient designing and understanding the problem.
NEXT STEPS
Iterating on social accountability features and test.
Profiles give students a way to hold themselves accountable, but when you can work out with incentives (weekly challenges feature) and friendly competition among friends, you become more likely to stay consistent.
Weekly Challenges
Complete challenges to earn points and compete with the entire Cornell community to earn prizes.
Adding Friends
Invite friends to the app to keep each other accountable and complete challenges together.
