Designing the first experience for a social fitness app built around challenges, shared stakes and accountability.
Challenge a friend. Put something on it. Show up.
CommitAI, internship, 2025.
When I joined, the founders were exploring a fitness app with a cloud mascot at its centre. People could challenge friends to exercise, follow their progress and bet on whether they would complete a workout.
The character gave the idea personality. But I felt the experience needed to make the people, and their commitments, more prominent.
Early explorations gave the mascot a leading role across the arena and reward experience.
I introduced simpler characters that kept the founders’ playful vision while letting the relationships between people give the app its energy.
The characters could guide users and celebrate progress, but the challenger, the commitment and the workout carried the story.
Alongside the product experience, I helped shape how CommitAI would present itself at launch. We used the Jester brand archetype to guide its humour and tone.
I designed characters, the logo and a visual direction that could carry that personality across the app and its go-to-market materials.
Feedback from the beta showed that choosing and setting up a challenge took too many steps, especially when someone was about to work out. People also struggled to give the screen their full attention mid-set. Separately, AI posture recognition did not always count repetitions reliably.
I addressed the setup friction by bringing time, repetitions and the start action onto one Customise screen after a challenge was selected. That made the path into a workout more direct.
The recognition issue remained a technical constraint; the redesigned flow did not resolve it.
Over six months, I helped shift CommitAI from a mascot-led idea towards an experience centred on challenging another person and following through. The simpler characters and Jester-inspired identity kept its humour, while the product flows gave the commitment itself more prominence.
Beta feedback then helped me refine the route into a workout and distinguish design friction from the recognition issue still to solve.
CommitAI was later renamed and repositioned. This case documents the product stage I worked on in 2025.