I joined Openfit in early 2021 as Head of User Experience & Research to lead their Product Design team as they looked to scale the platform.

Founded in 2018 by Jon Congdon (co-founder of BeachBody), Openfit initially launched with an expansive library of on-demand workout programs. Over the next few years the company expanded it’s platform through acquisitions of Gixo (an innovative live workout fitness start-up) in 2019, and MYXfitness (an exercise bike and Peloton alternative) in 2021. Beachbody, the parent company of Openfit also went public in the summer of 2021.

In my first year at the company, I led a number of key design initiatives including the re-launch of the connected bike experience which integrated the MYXfitness platform into the extended Openfit platform experience, as well as introducing heart-rate based training to the in-class experience.

Platform & User Experience

Growth & Commerce

Openfit’s Growth & Commerce team oversaw the optimization of three unique purchase funnels that resided under the Openfit brand. The first – and most critical – was that of the core Openfit digital subscription. Complementing this were the purchase funnels for two additional revenue streams – the sale of MYX connected exercise bike, and a family of supplements sold under the Ladder brand.

One of the most critical areas the design team supported was increasing the awareness of and converting sales of the MYX exercise bike. While initially optimizing the MYXfitness.com website experience, I also led an initiative to migrate and merge the MYXfitness site with the existing Openfit website. This entailed working closely with our brand and marketing partners as we updated our value proposition to focus on a more personalized approach to fitness.

Core Platform

The Openfit platform provides subscribers access to a suite of content and tools to track and improve their overall health and wellness. At its core, the platform enables users to find the workout types they are most interested in, join a scheduled live class or take an on-demand one on their own schedule, enroll in a customized multi-day/week workout program.

I oversaw the design of a number of key differentiating product features on the platform. The most prominent was introducing heart-rate (HR) based training to both on-demand and live class experiences. This included the pairing of 3rd party HR monitors (e.g. Apple Watch, Amazon Halo) with the platform and the display of real-time HR data on-screen during workouts. Other key enhancements included adapting the existing live ‘floor’ workout class experience (e.g. cardio, pilates, etc.) to the connected bike experience, and prototyping, user testing, and piloting a new live ride experience.

Trainer App

With the addition of the live bike class experience, upgrading and enhancing the application our trainers used to conduct classes became a necessity. Not only did the Trainer App need to incorporate additional features to support the new bike classes, but the entire platform needed to be re-platformed from an architectural standpoint in order to scale and support the increased number of live classes being added to the system.

I oversaw the both discovery and design phases of this project as the design team worked closely with our training, product, and engineering teams to glean insights into what the most the most effective and efficient way trainers looked to conduct live classes, the technical constraints we were faced with and the feasibility of our early concepts, while also understanding how the new experience could be rolled out in parallel with the existing trainer app that was still being used dozens of times a day by our strainers.

User Research & Testing

While user research and testing were already being implemented when I first joined Openfit, one of the major accomplishments in my first one hundred days was to improve the design team’s proficiencies in conducting research, and to solidify a data-informed approach to our product development workflow.