Supernatural

The Supernatural Ecosystem

Apps that span across platforms, all talking to each other

The core parts of the Supernatural system are the VR app (Oculus) and the mobile app (iOS and Android), with an optional app for Apple Watches. Each app had their own feature sets, aimed towards giving users the experience they needed at different parts of the day.

The Supernatural VR app (Meta Quest) was focused on their actual workout--get them moving their body as quickly as possible. The mobile app focused on tracking and sharing of their experience--give users something to remind them and motivate them to keep working out.

User Research

Women had the most to gain from working out in VR

Earlier design decisions made in the development of Supernatural were often controversial or hard to finalize. I believed that one of the reasons for this was that we had no real idea of who the true users of Supernatural would really be. Because of that, I took time aside to do my own personal explorations into who this user might be.

Since I had no buy in for this initially, I focused less on market surveys or on actively asking questions of possible users--those types of studies are expensive! Instead, I focused on observations and leaning on other peoples’ knowledge. My research spanned everything from competitive analysis, to reading various research studies into fitness motivations and digital sharing, to actively consuming as much media about fitness combined with technology as I could. I watched YouTube videos of people introducing their families to VR, trawled through Reddit forums about Peloton, read mommy blogs talking about post-partum weight-loss journeys... and I found that the people who had been impacted the most had a few things in common.

• They were underserved by traditional fitness options. Most had tried them before but it didn’t work for them--they were often too intimidating, not a safe space, or they felt like they just didn’t belong.
• They had anxiety around working out, much of it to do with how other people would react to their bodies or how they themselves did not want to perceive their own appearance.
• They were often really busy with other things--often taking care of family--so had to work hard to fit working out into their schedule.

All three of these things were much more common with women, especially those who had children.

The results of my research were validated by a later market research study that Supernatural did to explore its target audience. Women were a significant population of the target market--very different from the traditional idea of what a VR user was at that time.

Quest App

Focus on keeping people in their flow state to make the exercise easier on them

The menus were designed to make it easy to jump into a workout -- provide all the information needed to make a decision in a simple way... or if you couldn’t decide, provide a ready made choice for you in the Workout of the Day.

Once inside of the workout, however, most of the UI disappeared. You didn’t see points or settings until there was a break in the song or you paused the workout. Showing scores actually brings people out of flow states--it gives them something to focus on and pay attention to--which meant that it actually made them pay more attention to the workout and how tired they were getting. Removing scores allows them to continue going for longer, while still feeling excited about doing so.

Mobile App

Continue engagement and community, even when outside of the headset

At launch, the mobile app was required to log into Supernatural. While this may seem like an additional and unnecessary step, it actually made a lot of things significantly easier:

• signing up for an account was much easier because typing is much quicker and more accurate on a mobile device vs in a VR headset
• it gave people something to download and check out even if they did not already have a Quest
• it enabled shareability--there wasn’t a good way to share curated clips from your Quest experience to your social media networks. By having summaries (and later an exportable shareable asset), it gave people something visual to talk about
• tracking achievement over time was easy. They didn’t need to put on the headset to see their progress and they could see it at any time.
• we could send them notifications that they would receive even if they weren’t in-headset. Given that a lot of VR apps lose users due to the high effort of putting on a headset, mobile notifications enabled Supernatural to feel more “sticky” and more prevalent in their lives.

Onboarding

Meet people where they’re at... not where you want them to be

One thing that I pushed very heavily for was to track where users may be coming from... and design all those entry points evenly.

Since I knew from the market research study that our userbase was not going to skew heavily towards the typical VR fanatic, I believed that we needed to design for the non-VR user. That meant explaining things to them. Showing them exactly what they needed, making all the relevant purchases easier for them--including buying a Quest in the first place.

We anticipated being able to get good press so I knew where some interested customers might enter from--simple Google searches after reading an article about us online. So our website flow needed to support them through that whole journey.

Once they were bought in, I also pushed heavily to remove questions related to weight, height, and gender from account sign up. These were all things that were not meeting our users where they were, but instead directly asking them about topics that they may have anxieties around.

I believe that all of this contributed to the welcoming and supportive community that has built up around Supernatural.

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