Casden Consulting · UX Research & Insights / Strategy Consultant · March 2024

Designed Remote Research Program to Ground Fitness Equipment Product Refresh

A leading fitness equipment company approached our team at Huge to support a strategic refresh of their core product line—the stationary bike and treadmill. They aimed to introduce new hardware UX features and develop an updated design language, but needed qualitative research grounded in real-world user attitudes, behaviors, and unmet needs to inform these critical product decisions. I designed a multi-phase remote research program that prioritized both geographic diversity and budget efficiency. Rather than conducting traditional in-person sessions, I selected a remote video survey platform that allowed us to recruit current equipment owners who had been actively using the bike or treadmill for at least six months. This approach gave us access to deeper behavioral insights from experienced users across a wider geography. I identified key experience territories that would serve as fertile ground for hardware feature ideation, balancing the inherent trade-offs of remote qualitative tools—such as limitations on question volume and follow-up probing—against the exceptional access the self-recorded video response format provided. The insights from this research program directly shaped the client's product roadmap. They used our findings to prioritize several new hardware features for their next product cycle and to inform the next generation of design language for their equipment, ensuring their product refresh was firmly anchored in authentic user needs and behaviors.