Being fit is the crucial ingredient for any species’ survival. Humans are no different. Amid this pandemic, everything has been put on hold, and the people are restricted in their homes. Well, you can’t put your health or fitness on hold; that’s where these AI-based fitness apps come into the picture. These apps are like an essential commodity nowadays, and the health tech industry is experiencing an exciting increase in the use of these fitness apps.
The numbers presented in a survey from the popular site Statista clearly state the constraint of these AI-based fitness apps. There are currently more than fifty thousand apps operating in this domain. These numbers will keep growing as there are some features and functionalities that are not delivered to the users.
The fitness industry is leading the market in terms of profit in these recent years. The numbers from a report of Statista states that the revenue generation of these apps will increase to more than 50 billion US dollars by the year 2022.
These apps make the most out of the available technologies and cater to the users’ varying needs. If you are planning to enter the genre of health and fitness, you should be aware of the industry’s current trends. With a great idea and following the AI-based fitness app development process guidelines, you can still make it big in this highly competitive market.
GOQii has made its place in the top lists among other fitness apps by delivering precisely what the users ask. This blog will explain various features and development processes, which will help you develop your AI-based fitness app like GOQii.
What Is GOQii, And How It Works
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GOQii is one of the top intelligent and preventive healthcare apps that has been launched in the year 2013 that uses a unique “Contact Tracing” system. Its headquarters are in California, USA. With the help of this app, the users can track other users in a communicable range. This can be very helpful in the current situation of this pandemic.
Unlike other fitness apps, GOQii has developed a complex but effective solution that consists of a fitness band, a team of personal trainers, various certified health care experts, and qualified doctors. This app collaborates with various popular diagnostic centers and labs; therefore, the users can have their check-ups done in the comfort of their home and get the correct diagnostics. The fitness band provided with this app helps the users view and analyze their health reports.
They offer a state-of-the-art security solution within their app as it is necessary to have your health records safe and secured on a cloud storage-based health locker. Although, the users can access their records anytime from anywhere in the world.
GOQii has achieved a user rating of 4.4 across all platforms and one million-plus downloads. This app makes the most of the AI technology to get the users the best fitness and healthcare app possible. Now that we know about this app and its success, let’s get into its working.
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Working Of GOQii
When a user logs in or sign-up in the GOQii app, he/she is asked about various generic questions such as name, age, height, weight, etc., but there are specific sections that are meant for the app to understand the goal of the user.
After getting a Goqii subscription, the users are asked to set their fitness goals and enter medical information. Based on the information provided, Goqii recommends five coaches and asks users to choose one. After selecting the coach, there will be a 30-minute call between the user and the coach. During this call, the coach will understand your expectations from the app, your current fitness routine and suggest changes in daily habits or diet if required.
The users don’t have to worry about their medical data being leaked to the coaches. All the coaches can only access information like the user’s age, height, gender, weight, and the goals defined by them. Although, different users will be assigned different coaches as their needs vary according to their body types.
Users can connect the fitness band to the GOQii app to monitor and save their health-related data on the app. Users have the option to either purchase the band offered by GOQii, or they can purchase any fitness band and connect it with the app. The app serves the purpose of a fitness trainer and a healthcare monitoring system. Users can get advice on their health, their fitness goals, and their diet plans.
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Why Develop an AI-based Fitness App?
Fitness, health, AI, and machine learning are now entirely linked when it comes to the fitness industry. As per various technology experts, artificial intelligence tends to make everything automated and better. It can empower the app and hike up the engagement level in fitness apps, which ultimately increases revenue generation.
There are several things that the combination of AI and machine learning can do for your app. These technologies can help you predict the exercises your user needs and can perform based on the profile of a particular user. AI can help you create different sets of workouts while analyzing and learning the performance of the users and the results they have achieved.
AI can record and analyze the heart rate and blood pressure of a user from their wearables and suggest the best practices that suit their body condition. Apart from this, machine learning can help your project by learning the habits, duration of workouts done by a user and his health conditions and predict the future workout based on this data to achieve the desired outcome.
Not only users but the coaches on these fitness apps can also benefit from this combination of AI and machine learning. Coaches will get the desired data sets to draw a custom diet plan or a workout plan for their users. Machine learning can automate various time-intensive tasks and avoid human error that is a crucial factor in the health service industry. Leveraging healthcare technology consulting services from experts can answer multiple of your doubts; experts can guide you on how AI-based fitness app development can personalize various processes that make the process easy to use and lower the cost for your customer service.
It has been observed that AI-based fitness apps are more successful than ordinary apps as these technologies help you boost sales and marketing, enhance decision-making, and much more.
Essential Features to Be Included in the AI-based Fitness App Development
When developing an efficient app like GOQii, certain features should be present in your project. As these apps are designed for more than the users’ basic tracking and monitoring activities, these are features become crucial for their development process. The overall functionality of your app will depend on these features, so make sure that your mobile app developer integrates these features in your project.
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Registration
The most crucial part of using an app is to register yourself. This acts as a record of that particular user for your app, and the user gets to use the services offered by your platform. Ensure that your users don’t waste enough time filling in various unwanted details. You can either design a custom form to get the necessary details of the users, or you can allow them to sign-up with various social media networks.
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User Profiles
After the registration, users should be able to create their unique profiles on your platform. You can design this part as per your app’s functionality. The users should be able to fill up the necessary data that are short, simple, and straightforward. Everyone loves the option of setting their profiles public or private. They should have an option to display their status.
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Performance Tracker
An ideal AI-based fitness app will be integrated with a fitness wearable band that will help your app to collect various data related to the performance and health of the users, such as heartbeat, footsteps, calories burned, etc. The AI will crunch these numbers to analyze and generate a performance report. Ensure that these figures and reports are displayed in the form of graphs and charts for the user to understand easily.
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Search functionality
The search button is a prominent feature for any app. Users can search for various workouts sets, doctors, coaches, diet plans, etc. To add ease of access, you can integrate this feature with auto-completion of words and suggestions. Searching for any desired item or program makes your platform faster to use, as users don’t want to waste their time manually searching for it.
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Wearable Device Connection
API and the Internet of Things (IoT) go hand in hand in this genre of app development. Your app will gather essential data from the user’s wearables through this feature. Your app should be able to connect with the wearable fitness band of the users to monitor their footsteps, heartbeat, calories burnt, etc., without any delay. If you are launching your project on multiple platforms, your app should connect with a wide variety of wearables.
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Push Notifications
This feature should be the most generic feature in the process of AI-based fitness app development. Implementing this feature will allow you to remind your users about their upcoming sessions, appointments with doctors, medication times (if any), and much more. You can also remind the users to use the application for perfect results in case of any absence.
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Reward Points
To motivate the users towards their set goals, you can use this feature to award them some reward points to complete a goal. The users can use these reward points to purchase various subscriptions or add-on on your app. This feature will boost your customer loyalty and engagement. On the other hand, it can also act as a promotional feature to attract new users.
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Video Coaching
Training on video is so much better than training via modules. This feature should be on your platform to allow users to get a personal workout or consultation session with any coach or doctor. These types of features help the users in boosting their morale via learning the techniques the correct way. Personal coaching will motivate the users to achieve their fitness goals.
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Development Process
Creating a fitness app with AI integration is considered a complicated task. Knowing all the features, technologies, etc., definitely helps in simplifying the process. Now that you know all about the essential features to be included, you can proceed towards conducting research on this particular market. This research will reveal several important points: your competitors, strategies, monetization models, and much more. The crucial point is allowing the capital for this project. It would be best if you decided on an amount that you can spend on developing this ambitious project.
Technologies to Consider
There are specific APIs and tools that will help you in developing these great apps. These tools and APIs have various functions, and each is important in its own way. It depends solely on your choice to integrate them or not, but to develop an efficient fitness app that can be popular among the users, these tools are necessary.
The APIs that are in the list are Google Fitness API, Lumo API, Starve, Health Graph, MisFit, Breezometer air quality API, Jawbone UP, Unofficial fitocracy API, Runscope API, etc. The list of tools includes BMI calculator, Withings, FoodSpex.
These APIs and tools work in the background, hidden from the users behind the hardware. There are specific hardware requirements for the wearables that will connect to your app to fetch the required data, such as Ambient light sensors, Bioimpedance sensors, Skin response sensors, Barometric altimeter, Accelerometer, Gyroscopes, Compasses, etc.
Apart from these APIs, tools, and hardware, there are some languages and frameworks required to enhance your app’s functionalities. These programming languages include C, Java, JavaScript, and HTML5. To deliver dedicated cloud hosting, a cloud computing platform is mandatory, such as IBM SoftLayer. Two powerful frameworks that are preferred in the development of these apps are Android SDK and Spring Framework.
GitHub can be used for code collaboration, and for performance monitoring, you can use Relic. For tracking any issue, you can consider JIRA and Confluence for the purpose of project management. There will be a need for a help desk, and you would require a chat desk; for this purpose, you can use HipChat.
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Monetization
The ultimate purpose of developing an app of any genre is to make money. Your AI-based fitness app can make money based on the monetization model you choose. There are three most common monetization models adapted by the various prominent fitness app companies: In-app ads, Subscriptions, and Freemium.
In-app Ads: This monetization model does not charge the users. Under this model, your app will display ads of various relevant companies on your app and charge a fee to them. This model is less popular than the other two models as too many of ads irritate the users resulting in poor user feedback.
Subscriptions: You can implement this monetization model if your app has all the premium features that users will willingly pay for. You can create various subscription models to allow access to certain features in each group. This model has been very successful and has helped apps in generating a high amount of revenue.
Freemium: This model is the most popular of all the three. As per this model, you can allow users to access few features for free and charge a fee for other advanced features or any add-ons. This will help you in gathering an audience and impress them with your app’s functionalities. Freemium is by far the most successful market strategy as per the experts.
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Team Requirements
AI-based fitness app development process will require a team of developers with different expertise. You have the option to either hire an individual engineer/developer to create your app or hire an AI development company that can execute the task with desired results. Before selecting the team, make sure to check their background and experiences. These professionals should be well-rehearsed in the field of AI and the internet of things.
An ideal team for such kind of developments includes a Project Manager, App Developers, Back-end Developer, UX/UI Designers, QA engineer, and App Maintenance Expert.
Conclusion
The advancement in technology has revolutionized the fitness industry. You can track your vitals and monitor them through an app with AI and machine learning. Despite of the competition in this domain, there is still a lot of room for a new advanced AI-based fitness app. With the right sets of features and integrations, your app can be successful in this genre.
At Matellio, we can help you in your AI-based fitness app development with our highly qualified team of proficient engineers and developers. Our team of experts knows every in and out of the AI and machine learning integrations. There are several high-rated fitness apps out there with excellent ratings and performance that we have developed. Call us to get a consultation on your unique idea.
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