Product Design (UX • UI)
Company: Silofit
Head of Design & Co-founder: Johan Rosell
Year: 2021
Unlocking access to private fitness spaces and personal trainers
Silofit is an innovative start-up specializing in on-demand fitness spaces and mobile app development. They convert small offices in Montreal and Toronto into private micro-gyms called Silos, which can be rented by the hour using the Silofit iOS and Android apps. Initially targeting busy professionals looking to squeeze in a workout in their schedules, Silofit expanded its services to provide an ecosystem for fitness professionals managing their businesses. Joining the Silofit team as the second designer, my responsibilities included conducting a comprehensive audit of the two Silofit mobile apps, designing new app features and a new website to better address fitness professionals’ needs, and establishing the Silofit design system’s foundations to ensure cohesive brand and communication. This collaborative effort involved working closely with the Product, Engineering, Brand, and Leadership teams.
Enhancing brand appeal for increased customer adoption
A continually evolving brand
From its debut in 2017, the Silofit brand underwent multiple revisions to adapt to evolving insights and shifting business priorities. However, frequent changes and pivots may confuse both gym-goers and fitness trainers, leading to a lack of trust and reluctance to try the service. With aspirations for growth and expansion, the company faced the challenge of establishing its customer base in a competitive and crowded industry, made worse by post-pandemic economic constraints.
Below is an example of one of the early iterations through which the main Silofit mobile app went, as explained in more detail by Johan Rosell, Silofit’s co-founder and Head of Design. Initially, a beige color scheme was implemented to evoke a sense of mindfulness. This was later replaced with a darker palette more aligned with the fitness market’s trends in 2021.
BRAND DIFFERENTIATION AND THE SILOFIT DESIGN SYSTEM
One of my first mandates was to develop a visual language for for our digital products based on the new branding strategy. I laid the foundations for a design system tto ensure brand cohesiveness and efficiency. In parallel, the Brand team’s new brand book became our primary guide, playing a pivotal role in establishing the Silofit visual language across apps, website, and social media. It directly informed our design principles, patterns, and components.
As part of Silofit’s new visual language, I developed two sets of illustrative icons and product illustrations to help us convey the brand personality in the mobile apps and differentiate Silofit’s products from the competition.
Building the Silofam community
One of Silofit’s core values is fostering collaboration and creativity, knowing that working as a unified team will help achieve greater success. To communicate this message to the fitness communities, I helped our Brand and Marketing teams with various visual design initiatives and materials to be published on Silofit’s channels of communication: graphic assets and animations for Instagram and other social media accounts; presentations material; graphic assets for the Apple and Android stores.
A complete website revamp for a more authentic reach
Given its recent branding updates and two-sided market strategy, Silofit’s website required a comprehensive overhaul in both visual and content aspects to effectively communicate its offerings to both gym-goers and fitness professionals, with a heightened emphasis on the latter.
We redesigned the website to be fully responsive, comprising five pages: Homepage, About Silofit, Trainers page, Clients page and a trainers list index. The updated homepage also showed clearer messaging conveying Silofit’s value proposition to fitness professionals.
Two mobile apps for a two-sided market: onboarding and profile setup flows
Silofit originated from the concept of providing a solution for busy professionals seeking to incorporate workouts into their tight schedules without committing to a gym membership. Further market and user research soon revealed an opportunity to support fitness and wellness professionals in managing their businesses and increasing their earnings. To address this, Silofit introduced a dedicated Pro app, enabling fitness professionals utilizing Silofit private gyms (Silos) to enhance the efficiency of managing their schedules and responding to their clients’ workout requests.
1_GYM-GOER ONBOARDING AND PROFILE SETUP IN THE SILOFIT APP
I began contributing to the core user flows, focusing on the onboarding and profile setup experiences for both apps. Our initial emphasis was on the gym-goer persona, guiding users through the process of downloading the Silofit app, creating a personal account, and setting up their profile using an onboarding wizard and step-by-step process. Our primary objective was to update the UI components to align with Silofit’s recent rebranding in the apps, keeping UX optimization recommendations for the next phase.
2_TRAINER ONBOARDING AND PROFILE SETUP IN THE SILOFIT PRO APP
The second flow focused on the journey of fitness professionals, involving downloading the Silofit Pro app, creating an account, and setting up their profile. Leveraging the onboarding wizard from the Silofit app, our goal was to encourage trainers to provide comprehensive information, to establish trust and professionalism. However, we rapidly recognized that this approach resulted in an excessively lengthy onboarding process.
3_OPTIMIZING ONBOARDING & SETUP
To boost active user acquisition, we aimed to elevate the initial experience. However, analytics showed a massive drop in engagement after signing up: the setup wizard’s excessive steps were discouraging users from booking sessions. Recognizing the difficulty in motivating users to workout, we needed to accelerate the onboarding process. Ultimately, our onboarding and setup process should resemble a light warm-up, not a full HIIT workout!
Implementing an “Express onboarding” led to a 10% increase in conversions by focusing on several UX recommendations:
→ Allow account creation and exploration before prompting for profile completion.
→ Communicate the value of completing a profile and the necessity of data like location.
→ Ensure optional steps are visibly skippable or relocated to “Settings”.
Supporting trainers' business growth: +20% Pro subscriptions and +25% retention via new features
Collaborating with our UX researcher, we used journey mapping and brainstorming workshops like the Crazy 8 framework to refine our understanding of gym-goers and fitness professionals. This improved our ideation for the Silofit Pro model, designed to help trainers grow their business. By subscribing to Silofit Pro, trainers gained advantages like unlimited Silo access. To drive retention, we introduced two features within the app: Adding a personal trainer to your Silo booking, and Purchasing a trainer’s intro offers package and use it to cover the costs of your next scheduled session.
Positive user reviews on trustburn.com
Retrospective
In less than six months, our small Design team (initially consisting of two and later expanding to three designers) achieved substantial milestones and established solid foundations for the company in terms of visual language, branding, design process and design operations. This was my first time joining an early-stage start-up, and working closely with Johan, Silofit’s co-founder and Head of the Design team at the time, proved to be an enriching experience that expanded my understanding of the startup landscape. I gained valuable insights into the dynamics of entrepreneurship, mobile app design and development, as well as the constraints and challenges inherent in such an environment. Unfortunately, Silofit officially closed its doors in August 2023 amid a sector-wide downturn for Canadian technology start-ups.