Raunaq Shah

SERVICE DESIGN ODYSSEY • 2022-2024

How might we make the cult’s fleet of gyms a loved, attractive & profitable service?

Airbnb of gyms.

Gyms have high capex & recurring costs to run & Covid lockdown wiped out many gyms. But in post-covid world, many HNIs started opening standalone gyms or small chain of gyms as they were becoming a lucrative business model. And cult.fit acquired & partnered with many high quality gyms to build a fleet of 300+ gyms in Bengaluru & Hyderabad & was approaching gym monopoly in some cities.

Platform

cult.fit has became a platform that offers turnkey facilitation in the gym deployment & operation along with easy brand trust for any investor who runs or wants to run a gym

marketplace

on the already popular cult platform made cult.fit a silently growing monopoly in Indian fitness space

Platforms that mediate two parties at scale face these challenges

Cult came across two challenges.

Understanding the Gym Ecosystem

Gyms primarily make profit through renewals.

Gradually, all internal senior stakeholders aligned to the riskiest assumption:

A stellar on-floor training experience at gym is what new-to-fitness beginner members want.

Trainer as a product.

Trainer quality = Experience quality.

Trainer’s inherent drive is key

Partially validated hypothesis: Intermediate & Advanced members rarely seek guidance

“How might we improve the on-floor general training experience of the new-to-fitness to early intermediate gym members?”

empower the general trainer (GT)

-Reward truly stellar floor training experience

-Make everyday tasks easy & clear for GTs

Enter Guaranteed Guidance.

Onboarding journey to make guidance guaranteed for every new ‘beginner’ member made live in one pilot gym

Trainer: Handwritten Exercise Cards Create Digital Workout plan in 10 minutes
Member: Mark your exercise cards See & log your workouts on your phone

“This is when I joined & started with a guerilla research to understand the members & GTs at the pilot gym. What we found...

Convenience & Clarity
"I know what exactly to do today with the workout plan."
On day 1, the trainer talks to the member & creates a workout plan from the trainer app
The plan reflects on the cult app & member starts working out
Member can dial up/down the intensity or swap another day's workout
Low Trust in Plan
"Sometimes trainer says, 'I will show you a better exercise than the plan.'"
1
During peak times, trainer shows alternate exercises to manage the crowd
2
Some trainers question the credibility of the workout plan algorithm
Need for Variety & Freedom → Personal Ownership
"I want new exercises. I have been doing bicep curl since 2 weeks. Can I add?"
1
There is a layered desire of members to change their exercises to tackle boredom
2
The need to add/remove their own exercises is also an ask to take the personal ownership of the fitness journey

Understanding Gym Member

The quotes are crafted and only representative of the research findings

Impact & Experiments

The projects were done at different times as per organisational priorities but are shown together for the context & narrative

LASTING IMPACT • 20K MEMBERS
About 20% members across 300+ gyms continued to use the workout plan for more than 9 months without an active team working on it!
LASTING IMPACT • 300+ GYMS
Trainer-led assessment became a differentiating factor at the cult's gym & it contributed to personal training sales & revenue
Projects
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REDESIGN • 25K MEMBERS • 2022
"I don't have to ask the trainer which muscle groups got hit. That's good."
Qualitatively, we saw reduced instances of gym members reaching out to floor trainers for simple queries around muscle groups activated for an exercise
Avg Time Spent
8 sec
Avg Time Spent
11 sec
PRODUCT DESIGN • 25K MEMBERS • 2022
"It's nice. Now I can add new exercises to my workout plan."
~20% members in 12+ pilot gyms continued to use the workout plan for over 3 quarters without active team working on it!
PRODUCT DESIGN • 400+ MEMBERS • 2023
"We (trainers) struggle to find the member at the gym because there is no profile photo."
Members with profile pictures went up from 55% to 66% in a week at the pilot gym but then dropped. Active nudge from center manager on the floor maintained it at 58%.
SERVICE DESIGN • 2024
"I (trainer) won't sit at the pod. It feels lame."
To improve trainer visibility, gym operations lead an experiment where a trainer pod was put at 3 gyms. While members did enquire with the trainers, the experiment did not work as trainers felt the pods reduced their perceived value.
SERVICE DESIGN • NOT LIVE • 2024
How might we manage treadmill crowd during the
peak hours at gym?
We designed an experiment to reduce the crowd waiting for their turn at the treadmill by offering expert-approved alternatives.
[Impact coming soon]
PRODUCT DESIGN • CONCEPT • 2024
How might we establish early trust on our workout plan when a member creates it?
TRAINER IN YOUR POCKET
Trained AI algorithm as per the POV of our fitness expert was the salient feature of this direction with personalised chat to improve workout quality & education
PRODUCT DESIGN • HIGH PROMISE CONCEPT • 2024
How might we motivate members to become more active by showing their holistic fitness progress?
A holistic fitness report that shows a balanced view of a member's progress across strength, cardio, mobility, body composition, sleep & proportions to help member get a balanced view of their fitness
SERVICE DESIGN • 2K+ MEMBERS • 2023
How might we help members take more trainer-led assessments & help them understand their fitness baseline?
Workout plan usage held at ~20% members in 300+ cult gyms for over 3 quarters without active team working on it!
PRODUCT DESIGN • LOGGING CONCEPT • 2024
How might we make it easier for gym beginners to log their sets?
Inspired by extensive competitive study, I created a concept make logging sets easy for non-loggers as well power loggers.
PRODUCT DESIGN • LOGGING CONCEP • 2023
How might we make logging sets addictive for gym beginners so they can track their progress?
Muscle groups are highlighted to communicate the right degree of muscle activation per muscle group per week
PRODUCT DESIGN • CONCEPT • 2022
How might we motivate gym logging power users to track progress?
The concept aimed at showing muscle activation based on logged sets over different time period so members can get insights on the muscle-level intensity
PRODUCT DESIGN • 400+ MEMBERS • 2023
Around 2% of cult members have friend and kin using the account through different devices
Reduced fraud membership usage of 400+ cult members & had indirect positive revenue impact
PRODUCT DESIGN • 50+ GYMS • 2024
How might we make it easier for members to find & understand the value proposition of personal training ?
The design efforts led to ↑4% conversion & increased monthly sales by about
2 Lakhs (2024) in 2 months.

App as a bragworthy tool
"I feel proud to use my own app to check-in. I tell my friends 'my place is so advanced'!"
Financial Independence
"I want to earn more to control my time, become a personal trainer & then center manager."
Contribute beyond oneself
"I help members workout better & get interested in fitness."
Need for a system-led governance
Most gym owners employed some kind of tech app solution to track attendance & break times.
Conflict of Interest
A trainer handles extra members due to sudden peer absence, but is not accordingly compensated.
Survival-driven Curiosity
Trainers are curious about the sales & revenue of the gym since it affects their pay.
Key Pain Point → Identify member at the gym
Trainers struggle
to identify assigned members at the gym due to missing or unclear member profile images.
Key Member Need
"Posture is big thing. They (members) ask us about their posture mostly."
Low Value Feature
"I never search anyone. I just see who is in (the gym) & who I need to guide."

The quotes are crafted and only representative of the research findings

Understanding Floor Trainers

Impact & Experiments

The projects were done at different times as per organisational priorities but are shown together for the context & narrative

REDESIGN • 300+ GYMS • 2022
How might we make it easier for floor trainers to onboard & guide gym members?
"I can see my active members, their remaining sessions & expiry. That is good."
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Part of the initiative to make life of the personal trainer easy
REDESIGN • 300+ GYMS • 2023
"This is faster to edit the plan. I (trainer) am in a rush during peak hours so this is good."
We made a number of usability improvements while making the member details page more powerful with all their goals, injury, personal training schedule (if relevant) & more information upfront
PRODUCT DESIGN • 300+ • 2023
How might we make it easier for floor trainers to do assessments of gym members?
We created a more usable & powerful client management experience for personal trainers that enabled them to see potential clients as hot leads, do assessments & reassessments

Goal
A typical personal trainer aims to enrol 12-15 clients to fill up their daily time slots.
Identification at gym
Personal trainers should wear apparel that make them look different and aspirational than the general trainers in the gym.
Lack of defined breaks between sessions
"There is no single break for me between sessions. I try to put client on treadmill & get a quick bite in
10-15 minutes."
Key concern of personal trainer
High crowd during peak hours make trainers less confident to take on more clients due to unpredictable waiting times.
Mindset • Sense of competition
"At cult, a personal trainer competes with not only general training but also the group classes"
Core Need for Sales
"Converting a client needs 'groundwork' (time to establish rapport & expertise).
Mindset
"Our work is all about building relationships with the client.

The quotes are crafted and only representative of the research findings

Understanding Personal Trainers

Impact & Experiments

The projects were done at different times as per organisational priorities but are shown together for the context & narrative

LASTING IMPACT • 300+ GYMS
The personal training sales went up from ₹80k to ₹1.2L in 3 months per pilot gym with the introduction of a fitness manager & the assessment service at the 12 pilot gyms. Operations team will scale the service to 300+ gyms pan India. (2024)
Projects
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PRODUCT DESIGN • 2020
How might we make it seamless for personal trainers to manage their clients, leads & trials?
Assessment-as-a-service is a strong capability which after Ops training is used primarily as a PT sales tool
PRODUCT DESIGN • 300+ GYMS • 2020
How might we make it easier for fitness managers to keep tabs
on their reportee trainers?
Team had strong conviction but couldn't launch due to covid
REDESIGN • 2022
How might we make it easier for personal trainer to manage their day?
"I use to have my notebook for this. Now I can see overbookings, reschedule & book session from here. It's better."
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Part of the initiative to make life of the personal trainer easy
PRODUCT DESIGN • 300+ • 2023
How might we make it seamless for personal trainers to manage their clients, leads & trials?
We created a more usable & powerful client management experience for personal trainers that enabled them to see potential clients as hot leads, do assessments & reassessments