Designing Vi: The AI Personal Trainer

LIFEBEAM

LifeBEAM is a wearable tech startup that developed Vi, an AI personal trainer who talks to you as you workout and coaches you towards your fitness goals. Vi is based on a pair of advanced earphones with sensors that measure your heart rate, speed, step rate and other variables, enabling Vi to customize her coaching based on your real time performance, history and long-term goals. Users customize and track their workouts with the Vi Fitness app. 

As LifeBEAM’s User Research Lead, I:

• Integrated user research into the discovery, development and evaluation processes of an engineering dominated company.

• Lead all aspects of user research and usability testing for LifeBEAM’s hardware, firmware, app, and website.

• Conducted formative research to develop features

• Developed guidelines for Vi’s personality and interactions with users,

• Prototyped potential features and experiences, including digital screens, audio experience, physical exercises.

• Tested features, hardware, and digital designs before and after launch to ensure our users have the best possible experience.

• Initiated research projects to improve key features, increase eCommerce conversion on our sales website and Amazon, and develop features to increase user engagement and retention.

Designing digital and audio experiences based on wearable tech that users engage with while they exercise poses many challenges. I prototyped AI and hardware based experiences before either the AI or hardware exists. I prototyped and tested experiences that combined digital, audio and physical exercises. I designed experiences for people with a wide variety of fitness levels - from people who walk for exercise, or have difficulty motivating themselves to run, to ultramarathoners. This has reinforced my focus on the centrality of an in-depth understanding of a user’s needs, motivations and use context to design.