Virtual fitness platform

About the Client

Stepathlon is a virtual fitness platform that offers inclusive challenges for participants of all ages, genders, locations, and physical abilities. By taking steps and engaging in other wellness activities, participants move around a customised virtual course, earning points and engaging with a community. This platform provides a valuable tool for brands and rightsholders to connect with their fans and consumers, offering a turnkey solution for continuous engagement.

Stepathlon collects ethical and actionable data on participants, allowing for deeper insights and increased customer lifetime value. The platform’s global market potential extends beyond sports to areas like music, film, fashion, arts, culture, and entertainment. Additionally, Stepathlon generates revenue through challenge fees, sponsorship fees, and data-driven revenue.

Discovery

The Q team was brought in to help redevelop Stepathlon’s entire technology and product stack. During the discovery process the Q team helped distil clear user requirements, development milestones and a high level solution design, which was later used as the blueprint for development.

In the development phase, Q’s programmers were responsible for delivering a scalable solution in the format of web application, mobile application and a solution integrated into existing native apps via an SDK.

Design

Stepathlon’s white-label app for corporates and sports clubs needed an intuitive design to engage both employees and fans through its “Virtual Race” platform. We crafted a seamless user experience for key features like a multi-section homepage, community page, racemaps, and leaderboards, ensuring smooth navigation and interaction.

To enhance engagement, we integrated friends chat, contests, daily quizzes, and profile customisation, all designed with best UX practices and insights from user research.

Using Figma, we built a scalable design system to maintain consistency across devices. We focused on extensive research, wireframing, and prototyping to refine each feature and interaction. This iterative process helped us create a well-structured, user-centered design that met the client’s goals effectively.

Development

The primary objective was to deliver a customisable app designed to gamify user activity and reward users for engaging within the community. Users can participate in daily activities and contests to earn points, with the potential to win prizes. The development of the project followed a two-week sprint cycle, adhering to an agile methodology to ensure efficient iteration and feedback.

One of the most challenging aspects of the development process was integration with Terra, a third-party system that provided data on users’ physical activity, such as steps and activity minutes, from fitness trackers like Fitbit. The team developed a system to match users’ activities with their selected goals, and when certain milestones were achieved, trigger reward actions.

These rewards were then processed through another third-party system, LiveLike, which updated the leaderboards and reflected user rankings in real-time. This complex integration required significant coordination between systems to ensure accurate tracking and rewarding, creating a seamless experience for the users.

• Terra
  





• LiveLike
  





• Activity Tracking
  





• User Engagement
  





• Gamification

End Result

By launching the new platform we saw a three-time increase in user engagement compared to the old platform.