Laying the Foundation for Social at Future (0→1)
Future is a fitness app that pairs members with personal trainers and delivers personalized workout plans through the app. Clients complete coach-designed workouts using guided workout videos, track progress, and communicate directly with their trainer, all in one place.
While Future excelled at 1:1 coaching, one major gap remained: there was no way for members to interact with other people on the app. Motivation, accountability, and social reinforcement, powerful drivers of long-term fitness success were happening entirely outside the product.
This project introduced Friends, Future’s first-ever social feature. Designed 0→1, Friends laid the foundation for member-to-member interaction by allowing people to see, motivate, and engage with friends already training on Future. The goal was to increase Guest Pass sign-ups, workout morale, and ongoing engagement, while preserving the supportive, non-competitive tone of personal training.
The Problem
Future already offered a Guest Pass feature that allowed members to invite friends to try the app. However, the experience ended after the invite was sent:
• Members didn’t know if their friend joined
• They couldn’t see who their friend’s coach was
• They had no visibility into workouts or progress
• All follow-up and encouragement happened off-platform
As a result, Guest Pass felt transactional rather than social and once invited, there was no reason for friends to stay connected inside the app. We saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between inviting a friend and training together, turning Guest Pass into the entry point for a longer-term social relationship.
Discovery & Strategy
As the lead Product Designer on the project, I worked closely with a Product Manager, Marketing, Analytics, and Engineering. Together with PM and Marketing, we aligned on what this feature needed to accomplish:
• Extend Guest Pass beyond the invite
• Increase confidence and motivation through social visibility
• Encourage members to invite friends they already know
•Lay a scalable foundation for Future’s first social layer
I facilitated a FigJam workshop with Marketing, Product, Analytics, and Engineering to align on:
• What Guest Pass was not currently solving
• What “good” social looks like today
• Favorite social platforms and why they work
• How social motivation should feel in a fitness context
A key constraint emerged: fitness is sensitive. We wanted motivation and encouragement, not pressure, shame, or unhealthy comparison. Social at Future shouldn’t feel like competing against friends. it should feel like training alongside them.
Competitive Analysis
Patterns from discovery pointed strongly toward lightweight leaderboards and shared stats, but with nuance.
Direct & Adjacent Inspiration
• Strava / Nike Run Club: Clear examples of fitness social, but often overly competitive
• Peloton / Whoop / Ladder: Profile-based stats and community signals
• Beli: Relative rankings that feel personal and contextual, not absolute
• LinkedIn Puzzles: Friendly comparison, nudging, and peer visibility without stakes
What stood out:
• Relative ranking feels safer than absolute scores
• Nudging and cheering are low-pressure ways to engage
• Visibility increases participation (e.g. “people like you” framing)
Adding friends meant profiles needed to be meaningful. I analyzed:
• Fitness profiles (Strava, Peloton, Whoop)
• Social profiles (Instagram, TikTok)
The takeaway: profiles should be informative, lightweight, and optional, not performative.
Wireframing & Exploration
To reinforce social behavior:
• The new Friends leaderboard replaced the Guest Pass tab
• Inviting friends became secondary, accessible via an icon in the top-right
• Empty states encouraged inviting friends when none existed
• Leveraging Existing Infrastructure
We had recently revamped Guest Pass to include:
• iOS contact syncing
• SMS invites
• Pending invite states
I intentionally reused and extended this infrastructure to:
• Identify friends already on Future
• Display invite and pending states inside Friends
• Reduce friction between “invite” and “connect”
I explored multiple leaderboard formats:
• Minimal one-line stat cards
• Expanded cards with workout titles
• Rich workout-preview cards inspired by Instagram Stories and Snapchat
The most immersive option showed workout-complete visuals, but engineering flagged it as too costly given the tight timeline and planned New Year launch (aligned with Future End of Year Wrapped, historically the peak Guest Pass sharing moment). I iterated toward a lighter-weight, scalable solution that still delivered social value.
Development & Impact
Given timelines and the 0→1 nature of the feature, we focused on core foundations:
• Weekly leaderboard showing who’s working out today and this week
• Cheer / Nudge actions that send push notifications to friends
• Lightweight profiles with key stats
• Invite and pending states integrated into the experience
(Yes, think Facebook “poking,” but fitness-friendly) 👈
What We Deferred
• Instagram story-style workout sharing
• Rich media profile content
• Long-form social feeds
These were intentionally scoped for future phases once we validated behavior. Friends is the start, not the end, of social at Future. Upcoming considerations include:
•Expanding profile stats and workout history
•Enhancing cheer/nudge interactions
•Potential discussion boards or community posts, building on existing coach messaging behavior
We’ll iterate based on real usage data to determine what truly motivates members and double down there. This project challenged me to design social features that motivate without pressuring, connect without competing, and scale without overwhelming. By grounding decisions in user psychology, cross-functional alignment, and technical constraints, we shipped a meaningful 0→1 social foundation, one designed to grow alongside the Future community.
