Fitness App Ideas with Crucial and Innovative Features
Posted on November 16, 2022
Thousands of health and fitness apps are already available at App Store and Google Play. Statista puts the number in Google Play at 37,143 as per the report for Q1 2019. To a new entrepreneur, the space might apparently be saturated to provide room for implementation of more fitness app ideas. However, an overwhelming majority of apps in this category are either too basic or demonstrate unmistakable performance setbacks.
Thus, users are always out to find a decent app with comprehensive features and seamless performance. This article shares the most essential features that a fitness app should contain depending on the user behavior toward existing apps. In the second half, the text shares the most innovative features which have the potential to provide distinctive edge over competitors.
Also read: A guide to Enterprise and Consumer App Development
Essential Fitness App Features
It goes without saying that performance and scalability are among the factors most crucial in the success of an app. Besides these factors, following are some of the essential fitness app features.
Personalization
The users are likely to have a variety of conditions depending on their age and health issues. The app developer should not treat all potential users equally. For instance, it would be inappropriate to suggest a senior citizen to run miles when one might be suffering from multiple age-related challenges.
Personalization of fitness mobile apps implies sharing the most pertinent content to each user. Fitness tracking app must have a distinct profile for each user. The user should be able to enter one’s age, gender, weight, height, and any health related problems. As a consequence, the app should provide the most suitable pieces of information to ensure improvement in health and fitness.
Also read: How to Make a Fitness App
Push Notifications
Whether it is the workout hour or the time to take a medicine, push notifications are vital to assist users in maintaining their health and fitness schedule. There is a range of use cases for notifications in fitness apps.
1. Reminding user about the muscle they would work on today.
2. Reminding users to take a scheduled meal or medicine.
3. Sharing the progress at the end of each week and month.
Beware! The fewer, the merrier. Populating the users’ notification bar with too many reminders and overly excessive notifications may cause displeasure. A single notification each day is fine unless user explicitly set the otherwise.
Workout Tutorials
Human body has a total of 360 joints. It is evident from this number that movement is an inevitable part of fitness. Every muscle and joint requires sufficient movement to ensure higher muscle strength, better circulation of blood, and prevention of soars in joints. In words of Socrates;
“It is a shame for a person to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which one’s body is capable.” (Socrates)
However, fitness enthusiasts need to ensure that angle of exercise is correct to get the best results. The app should provide coaching on doing exercise for each muscle and joint the right way. Moreover, it should also reveal the purpose of each workout and the consequences of incorrect postures.
Also read: 5 Core Stages of User Experience Design Process
Activity Goals
Research indicates that milestone achievements motivate humans to achieve challenging goals. Thus, the app should provide small milestones for users so that they can track improvement over the time.
The feature of geolocation serves well. A user can turn on the GPS so that the app keeps measuring the distance traveled in a day. It also shares the path that one traverses. This path is automatically sketched onto the embedded map in the app.
Innovative Features in Fitness Tracking App
The fierce nature of competition in health and fitness category suggests that innovation is indispensable. Mob Inspire performed a survey regarding the kind of additional features that users would like to have in apps. Based on this survey, our experts came up with four innovative recommendations. They have also developed and tested these fitness app features as test cases.
Tracking Blood Pressure and temperature
To incorporate this feature, the developers require IoT devices with embedded pressure and heat sensors to realize such fitness app ideas. Some apps claim to measure without these devices. However, the experts at Mob Inspire have tested these apps on a wide range of cases with boundary conditions to find that these claims are fallacious. Independent peer review research also confirms this hypothesis.
Nevertheless, the devices – usually pulse oximeters – used to measure oxygen rates in blood are inexpensive. Thus, users would rarely ignore purchasing one if they are aware of it. These devices connect with smartphone app using Bluetooth to share the detailed readings.
Body Heat Map
Sensors are also available to measure muscle activity to sketch a heat map in the fitness app. These sensors identify amount of heat and flow of blood at a given instant. The readings enable mobile app to draw human body with points of high heat penetration.
This idea for fitness mobile apps is more effective when aided with a key stating normal and alarming conditions. Heat maps in apps assisted by IoT devices are highly effective after workout to determine if the session was sufficient or not.
Multi-Platform Synchronization
There is a range of smart devices available today with varying screens and operating system. Although smartphone is portable, a user may not always be comfortable using one for fitness app. For instance, a smart watch is a better choice while running whereas tablet serves better while viewing workout tutorial.
It is highly recommended that the app is also available on platforms like smart watches, tablets, and laptops. Besides, the app should be synced on each device. In essence, the profile of a user automatically updates on each device when one completes a workout session.
Sleep Monitoring
An overwhelming proportion of population suffers from sleep deprivation. It does not only include the total number of hours sleeping but lack of deep sleep as well.
Sleep monitoring feature is one of the most attractive fitness app ideas. Its effectiveness remained a question for years. However, recent studies and subsequent pieces of research indicate that apps an efficiently integrated feature should measure sleep with up to 95% precision.
Also read: Recommendations for Successful App Development Outsourcing
Sleep monitoring feature makes use of motion sensors embedded in smartphones. Every smartphone in past five years from a globally recognized manufacturer embeds motion sensor in it.
Most physicians recommend keeping smartphone considerably far from body unless switched off or placed on airplane mode. However, motion sensors also work while the phone remains on airplane mode. Thus, it tracks the movement of nearby object – mostly human and indicates the total number of times movement occurred during sleep hours.
Fitness App Development
Implementing fitness app ideas require developing a scope. You can have as many features as you would like. It also depends on the targeted niche and the objectives that you intend to accomplish with this app.
Mob Inspire carries an experience of over a decade in planning, developing, deploying, and maintaining native mobile apps. We also assist businesses in employing effective marketing strategies. Our platform innovation model drives development and sustainability of multiple startups each year.
Our experts would like to work with you to develop the best health and fitness app. Contact us today to get ahead.
