HERCULES

Hercules was one of our biggest projects. After launching, in only 4 months, we reached the mark of 20,000 downloads and more than 1,000 monthly active users. The project born from the team's desire to create one of the most delightful workout experiences in a mobile app.

The final version allowed the user to plan workouts, register results, analyze 3D exercise movements, and learn from the user's training history in a beautiful, interactive, and actionable graph.Hercules was built to leave behind old ways of tracking your workouts in exchange for a much more intelligent, fast, elegant and intuitive tool, perfect for both beginners and experienced Bodybuilders/Weightlifters.

To create a unique experience, we've integrated the Apple Watch and Apple's Health Kit Integration to our ecosystem, which allowed us to not only be more precise in terms of calorie counting and heart rate tracking, but also make room for a seamless experience between the application ecosystem and the user's workout routine.

The core of the project is our delightful experience in iOS during workout-tracking, statistical analysis, and movement evaluation. Since the app launch, while the users loved it, a recurrent request always popped up: use the Apple Watch. Seeing our user's requests and how the technology was evolving inside Apple's ecosystem, we decided that a companion app for workouts would blend perfectly with our project experience.

Our focus during the watchOS app development was to create a seamless integration experience with our current iOS app. The idea was to enable the user to get in and out of the gym without having to touch its iPhone, while all tracking and workout information would be available for the user in a timely manner just from glancing at his wrist.

After having all the workouts properly registered from the Apple Watch, the user has the ability to access all this information already processed and mapped into beautiful graphs and personal record statistics that would help to identify plateaus and plan the next steps of the workout.

During one of our researches, we have identified a niche inside the gyms that aneed of a solution to improve their workout experience: the group classes. Many gyms offer group sports and classes for their members and we saw an opportunity to create a great experience for them.

We created a concept for Apple TV using Hercules. In this version, we enabled group class teachers to easily create custom workouts; after creating a workout, the teacher could save the "workout presentation" and then use it anytime, anywhere he needed.

The app, running on the Gym TVs, would always be there, showing not only the gym members, but also the classes availability. At last, when in a class, the app would work as a helper for the teacher to engage the members and manage its participants.

The Olympus Labs is a space we use to try and test new ideas without constraints or even with a specific launch date in mind. While in this safe space where we can explore new ideas, we ended up creating an interesting proof of concept.

After sharing - with our users - a smooth Apple Watch experience, we started to search for what could be the next step. We questioned ourselves: What improvement would make our users' lives easier when working out? And to answer that question, we took a shot into the Internet of Things (IoT), more specifically, using a Arduino.

Our goal was to use this technology to create the perfect integrated workout tracking experience, where the user would enter the gym, do the workout, leave and everything would be registered for the user on the Apple Watch, without having to touch it.

The main goal was to first count the repetitions as the user performed exercises since on the Apple Watch version the user had to inform them in the Watch how many reps were executed. Using a couple of sensors, we created a small prototype that allowed the users to move through the sensors as if he was moving a bar, this way we could count the repetitions for the user directly from the real-life movement into the Apple Watch app.

While the first prototype wasn't optimized to be attached into gym's equipments, it worked smoothly, as you can see below in the video.