Why I Stopped Using Fitocracy (and what could get me to go back)

I received an invitation to join Fitocracy from a friend on November 1st, 2011.  At the time, I thought it would be a fun way to compete with him and to keep me on my fitness goals.  However, as you can see in the image above, I lasted all of twenty-three days as a Fitocracy user.  I was keeping pace fairly well with my friend, amassing points at a pretty good clip, so why give up?  What drove me away from Fitocracy?  It wasn't that I stopped working out; I kept going to the gym every other day, and have, for the past month, been working out five days a week.

So where did Fitocracy lose me?  I've come up with three major points that turned me away from the service, and hopefully, a couple of fixes that would make me take a second look:

1.) Exercises are not well-defined.

Let me explain this one a bit further.  I used to do a certain set of exercises every time I went to the gym (I still do, but now they're different exercises.  More on that in a while).  So the first day I used Fitocracy to punch in my workout, this is what I came up against:

Now what in Jablonski's name is a Dragon Flag?  Or a Flat Frog Raise?  Don't Know?  Well, how about if we look at that... Oh, right.  "No description available".  Sadly, I came up against this same phrase more often than not when trying to figure out the terms Fitocracy was using to describe my workout.  Most of the time, I tried to find something that sounded close enough to what I was doing, and just went with that.  Was I cheating on my workout?  Probably, but it wasn't really my fault.  Users shouldn't be forced to cheat because they can't figure out the terminology that your interface uses.

How can we solve this?

Combine the terminology with graphical representations of each exercise.  Use graphics to help users narrow down what they've been doing.  For example, if I want to enter that I've performed a stability ball exercise, I should be able to click on a picture of somebody on a stability ball.  From there, I can choose between a picture of a person sitting on a stability ball, a person lying on his back on a stability ball, on his stomach, etc., and so on until I've narrowed down what exercise I actually just did.  Now, I might not need to do this for every exercise I perform.  I'm pretty sure that when I perform squats, I can punch in the word "squats" and get to the exercise I'm looking for.  Ever been to a self-check lane at the grocery store?  Ever tried to buy produce there?  You can either go through menus to narrow down what you're trying to buy, or you can punch in the four-digit code that is directly descriptive of that type of produce.  The customer is free to use whichever method is most comfortable for him or her.  The same should be true for Fitocracy.  If they want to encourage inexperienced users to exercise, they should not make the use of technical language so prohibitive.

2.) Having to enter your workout into the website is tedious.

Although this might seem similar to the prior point (and I admit, trying to figure out those terms is tedious, too), the idea here is more general.  Even if I knew exactly what to call each exercise I perform, having to write down everything I've done, then bring those notes back home and enter them into Fitocracy's website is just about the last thing that I want to do when I am worn out from an hour-and-a-half workout.  Then, as time passes, I just forget.  That was how I fell off the Fitocracy wagon in the first place.  I missed putting in one workout, then was faced with trying to remember what I had done two workouts in a row (at the time, I was only entering my max-out week weight totals, not reps or sets, into my iPod's notepad.  Two days later, I would have had no idea what I had done).  Eventually, I just fell so far behind that I decided to forget it.

How can we solve this?

Well, some work has been done on this front already.  I received an e-mail recently from Fitocracy to notify me that they had put out an app for iOS devices.  Presumably, I could open up the app while at the gym, enter in my workout while I'm doing it, and be done with it.  Using this would eliminate the need for me to record exercises once at the gym, then again when I return home.  However, unless the app works offline, it will still be of no use to me.  I do not use an iPhone, or a smartphone of any kind.  I use an iPod, and the community gym that I use offers no WiFi service.  Furthermore, even if I did own a smartphone, I have found that I usually get very poor cell phone reception within the facilities.  So, what would be useful to me is if there was a function whereby I could enter my workout into the app while offline, and it would automatically update my profile on the website when I came into a WiFi hotspot.

3.) Fitocracy is not very much fun.

The entire idea of Fitocracy is to make working out into a game.  The idea that the company was going for was probably something like Farmville, where time spent in-game fulfilling tedious tasks earns a player more experience, which can be used to upgrade his or her farm.  However, there's no real point or reward for earning points/leveling-up on Fitocracy.  It is probably a more accurate to compare Fitocracy to Xbox Live's system of achievements/Gamerscore.  You earn experience/points, and then get to show off to everyone how many points you've earned.  The reason this works for Microsoft and does not for Fitocracy is twofold.  Number one, Microsoft does not need to make the experience of playing video games fun.  Playing video games is already fun.  Fitocracy, on the other hand, needs to entice its users to exercise, because exercising is not already fun.  Number two, Xbox Live automatically enters your achievements into your profile when you earn them in a game.  You don't have to go to Microsoft's website and type in your achievements, one-by-one, in order to raise your Gamerscore.  You don't have to do anything.  It's just a neat little side benefit to an already robust service.  As outlined above, such is not the case on Fitocracy.

How can we solve this?

dualshockers.com

I just squatted 500.  Where's my fairy wand??

I saved this point for last, because the problem is a little more complex, and, quite frankly, I'm not sure that I have one idea to solve it.  The point is, levels need to mean something beyond themselves.  I don't care if Fitocracy commissions a simple RPG/PvP fighter where techniques can be bought with experience, or if they create avatars with customization options available based on experience or levels (something akin to what Tekken games have done since Tekken 5)

The problem then becomes the issue of people cheating in order to procure more items, greater strength, or whatever the rewards end up being.  When asking people to self-report their progress, there always has to be an element of trust involved.  Fitocracy feels like they can trust people to be honest right now, because there's really no incentive to be dishonest in their current system.  But there's also no incentive to achieve anything in their current system.  It seems like customizable avatars would carry the least risk of system abuse (who would really care what their avatar looked like if they were not engaged with the system?).  But in the future, it would really be ideal if equipment were built with sensors and microchips, to where someone would be able to scan a QR code or something like that into the Fitocracy app, and the sensors would be able to tell how many reps the user is doing, how much weight he or she is lifting, and even scan the motion to be able to tell what kind of exercise the user is performing with free weights.  Then, cheating might be less of a worry, and some real rewards might be possible.  It might even make for a marketing point for a professional health club: "At Gold's Gym, we offer Fitocracy integration."

There are tons of other things that Fitocracy could implement that would make the experience more useful: I would love a set of workout plans that were tailored to my exercise goals.  When I decided to change my workout schedule from three days to five, I skimmed the internet, trying to find a good five-day workout plan.  It would have been marvelous to be able to go to Fitocracy, enter my fitness goals, and have them come up with a set of exercises (with explanations) that I could have done to reach them.  Demonstrations would also be really nice.  I had to visit several different websites before I had a good handle on what each exercise in my workout plan was supposed to look like.  It would be very convenient to have one website with video demonstrations and step-by-step instructions for all the exercises they list.

Congratulations!  You made it to the end of this blog post.  I am summarily bumping everyone who read the entire post to level two.  Just report below whether or not you read the entire thing, and I will raise your reader-level in my mind.  Tell all your friends.