Redesigning Vitruvian’s workout builder:
Cut workout creation time by 50% leading to significant reduction in user complaints
Vitruvian is a Perth-based fitness tech startup redefining at-home strength training through smart resistance hardware and a connected mobile app (think of it as a smart gym in your living room). One of our core features, the workout builder, was also one of the most criticised. From Instabug and app reviews to support tickets and social media posts, user frustration with this experience was loud and persistent.
As the lead product designer embedded in a lean, fast-moving team, I drove a full redesign of the workout builder from discovery through to delivery. There was no product owner at the time (just a mission and some chaos) so I identified the problem, prioritised the work, defined the vision, and led design delivery end-to-end.
Setting the scene
At this stage, Vitruvian was at the beginning of its growth phase and was still heavily dependent on investor funding. Our mission was to focus on acquiring new customers and generating revenue. The target market for the product were people who are pretty tech-savvy, often higher-income, and who value efficiency in their training. Think busy professionals who’re renting or living in apartments, don’t want to fill their space with bulky gym equipment, or just don’t have time to commute to a gym and wait around for machines. It was not intended to be a product for casuals or beginners.
The hardware itself was popular and well-reviewed, but it was extremely expensive to produce, so margins were thin. On the software side, the app was tied to the subscription model but it wasn’t bringing in meaningful revenue yet, and compared to the hardware, customers really weren’t impressed. There was a lot of chatter online along the lines of ‘the device is great, but the software is terrible’. That meant the app wasn’t just underperforming; it was becoming a risk to growth.
The company culture was also a big shift for me personally. I had come straight from a very structured, process-driven organisation. Vitruvian was the opposite; flat hierarchy, extremely fast-paced, and focused more on intuition rather than formal testing. So from a design side, I had to figure out how to bring in just enough structure to make progress without slowing the team down.
As we didn't have a product owner I took the intiaitive to step up; that required me to quickly understand not just the app, but the whole system (hardware and software together) and uncover where the biggest pain points were. The project took about six months overall, with a short pause halfway through for an unplanned rebrand.
What were users actually saying?
Putting the product to the test
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Had enough case studies? Skip ahead to see the pretty pictures and stats!
Workout builder: Big feature. Big problems.
From the feedback, it had the highest number of complaints and support tickets. In testing, every single participant got frustrated with it. It is not hard to see why when this is how you would create a workout.
- Pick an exercise
- Edit the set details - like adjusting weight and reps
- Save/add it to the workout
- Repeat for every single set for your workout
Once you were done, everything appeared in one long list (and most workouts would have at least 10 sets). If you wanted to reorder or create super sets you had to drag and drop each tile one by one. If you wanted to do any editing, you had to open each tile individually.
The problem
The takeaway was pretty obvious; the workout builder was designed around technical constraints, not user needs. Despite being central to the product, it was:
- Time-consuming and repetitive
- Not aligned with how users actually train at the gym
- Contributing to retention risk for our most engaged user group
- Generating the most support complaints across the entire app
What the users wanted was simple: a workout builder that felt faster, smoother, and much closer to how they’d actually set up a workout in real life.
Competitor analysis
Ideation
Collaboration & delivery
As the main designer on this stream, I worked closely with the broader product team to ensure successful delivery:
Developers
- Worked in Kanban but stayed ahead to reduce blockers
- Brought devs into early design conversations and WIP critiques
- Developers had direct access to Figma, commenting async on flows and specs
- Ran frequent playback sessions for devs to build empathy and context
- Regularly discussed edge cases and feasibility to align UX with technical constraints
- Stayed on standby to answer questions quickly and unblock them
- I tested changes on iOS and Android emulators by pulling Master builds + quickly double-check on physical devices once builds were pushed to TestFlight
Coach
- Validate accuracy of exercise logic and program structure
- Review and iterate on training-specific terminology and flow
- Partnered to gather product content when no writer was available
Other designers:
- Reviewed work with a part-time senior designer, but primarily worked independently
- Ran self-directed design critiques and validated direction based on user insights and product goals
Product, UX Writing, and BA (roles I covered)
- Acted as stand-in product owner and BA, setting priorities, writing tickets, and managing scope
- Wrote all in-product copy and empty states, leaning on insights and SME input
- Aligned priorities with business needs and user impact, especially in the absence of a dedicated product team
- Looped in customer experience team so they were ready with comms and social posts ahead of launch
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You’ll notice the branding shifted partway through. This change was the result of an unplanned but urgent rebrand initiated by the marketing team during the project.
Final solution
The final solution focused on enhancing user efficiency and satisfaction:
- Default Straight Sets: Adding an exercise now defaults to three straight sets, with additional sets copying the values of the preceding set, saving time for users.
- Grouped Straight Sets: All straight sets are grouped together, with their values displayed on a single card, reducing screen clutter and making it easier to review the entire workout.
- New Scroll Pickers for Weight: To address concerns about the slow, clunky weight adjustments and cluttered UI, I introduced scroll pickers. It allowed quick, natural scrolling while still enforcing weight safety caps in an unintrusive way.
- Supersets and Circuits: These became much more flexible. Instead of exercises disappearing and forcing users to jump back and forth, everything stayed visible in one place so you could group or split them however you wanted. This made editing far less frustrating and time-consuming.
Launch
When the new workout builder launched globally, the impact was immediate.
- The number of steps in the workout creation process was cut by half - it became much faster and smoother.
- Support tickets and complaints specifically about the workout creation dropped to almost zero in the very next quarter. That was a huge turnaround from where we started.
- User sentiment flipped. People were praising the redesign on social channels, where before it had been almost entirely complaints. Even fitness YouTubers with sizable followings began calling out the new workout builder as a standout improvement
Faster workout creation speed
+50%
With 50% fewer steps for workout creation, despite offering more advanced functionality.
Feature support tickets reduced to
0
By end of year, a dramatic shift from being the feature with the most customer support tickets.
Looking ahead
This project taught the value of proactive UX leadership in ambiguous spaces. By starting with real user problems, validating insights, and iterating quickly, we shipped a solution that meaningfully improved both experience and retention; even without a formal product process in place.
Moving forward, there are opportunities to further personalise the experience such as:
- Customising default settings such as sets, reps, training modes, and rest times
- Drag-and-drop support for structuring workouts
- And maybe a dark mode. People love a dark mode.