New App Brings Social Fitness Tracking to the Metaverse

Analogy is a product design studio that helps clients find clarity and fresh ideas through realistic and value driven work and creative process for driving clear outcomes. Today’s contributing author is a Project Manager at Analogy.

For years, we’ve had wearable tech that combines fitness-tracking with social networking. Now, a new platform is bringing that functionality to the metaverse.

Insane.Ai is a young startup on a mission to build the best home fitness solution on the planet. Insane uses your phone’s front camera with AI-powered motion tracking to make home workouts engaging and immersive.

Building a Metaverse Fitness Tracker

Analogy worked with Insane to redesign their existing app and to rebrand Insane into a future forward fitness company. With Facebook becoming Meta, new AR headsets being released every month and computer vision and motion recognition possible with everyday phones. Insane wanted to revolutionize the fitness industry by leading the way into the world of metaverse.

Designing for the metaverse was an interesting brief for us at Analogy. We studied how the metaverse works, what it is now, and what it could be in the future. We also researched  unique ideas like turning workouts into NFTs and collectibles. We also explored metaverse lands like Decentraland and Second Life, avatar and character customizing
on these platforms, and even how the economies on metaverse works. This research proved useful for us to get the branding and app design right.

Giving Athletes a New Metaverse Experience

We took a branding first approach to the app’s design. It was crucial to create a brand that resonated with people when they hear the name – Insane. Our goal was to rebrand Insane as a futuristic fitness platform that incorporated the best of AR, AI and the metaverse.

We developed the brand guidelines for Insane that conveyed a sense of futurism, technology and continuous forward motion. We used design elements like glitch effects. gradients and neo-glass-morphism to achieve this outcome.

The UI design followed the brand guidelines which led to a simple, interactive interface. A challenge we faced was to figure out how we can display the key elements and metrics of a workout on a phone screen that a user would place several feet away, while ensuring easy interaction. The UI achieved this by using large color coded blocks to display the most important information. This paved way for users to know exactly how they were doing at a glance and follow the workout on the screen.

Using the Metaverse to Make Exercise Fun and Addictive

The user experience was modeled after the metaverse lands and by studying character interactions on these lands. Upon studying the elements that create a sense of immersion and keep users coming back to their headsets more and more, we realized that it was not just one, but many elements, each contributing to various facets of the
metaverse.

Building an Economy

Beyond the gamification, worlds like Decentraland are an economy of its own. MMORPG games like Eve Online have in-game currencies which are directly tied to real life currency. We used a similar gamification approach to the experience design of the app, by creating levels (Silver, Gold, Platinum, etc) and in-game currency that has both in-game and real life rewards.

In game rewards could be new levels of workouts, avatar customization, new skins, accessories, etc. Real life rewards are fitness bands and Insane branded merchandise.

This combination of in-game economy, using the app as a socio-cultural platform and a
gamified approach to the design creates an audience that keeps coming back for more.
Insane has transformed an otherwise dreaded task of working out into an addictive, fun
and enjoyable activity.

The metaverse and decentralization movement uses “Attention As Currency” as one of
its fundamental operating principles. One day, platforms like Insane will use “Fitness as
Currency”, creating another layer of connection between the metaverses and the real
world.

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Insane is available on Google Play Store and App Store. Go to https://insane.ai/ to start
your Insane workout.
To read more about our process of design for Insane Ai, read our case study here:
https://analogydesign.co/portfolio/insane-ai/
If you’d like us to help you with your design requirements, get in touch with us by
clicking here: https://analogydesign.co/contact-us/