Concept project · Consumer & SaaS

Dopamine — a retention engine for MENA gyms

A four-surface product concept: a member mobile app, a gym partner portal, a trainer portal and a marketing site, designed end to end from user interviews and competitive analysis through personas, flows and UI. Built for Egyptian gyms: Arabic-first, WhatsApp-native, priced in EGP.

Role
End-to-end UX & product design
Surfaces
4 — app, 2 portals, web
Personas
4 — operator, trainer, member, staff
Market
Egypt · MENA

The problem

Gyms lose members quietly. Nobody notices the lapse until the renewal is gone.

Independent gyms and small chains in Egypt run on WhatsApp, a notebook and, sometimes, software built for Western studios. Memberships lapse unnoticed, renewals get chased by hand, and between visits nothing supports the member's motivation.

Dopamine's premise: retention is a design problem across four audiences at once. The member needs a reason to come back; the trainer needs to see who's slipping; the operator needs the back office to stop eating their week; and the business needs gyms to sign up.

Arabic-first
Bilingual EN/عربي throughout, not translated late
WhatsApp-native
The channel members and staff already live in
EGP pricing
Local payment reality, including cash

Research

Two tracks in parallel: interview guides per persona, and a competitive landscape mapped against the job each persona is actually trying to do.

User interview guides

A structured guide per persona: warm-up and context, then problem discovery that lets the participant name their own wound rather than confirm mine. Money and pain questions are tagged so synthesis can weight them.

Interview guide for the gym operator and admin persona
Interview guide — Persona 1, gym operator & admin

Competitive analysis

Competitors sorted into three tiers (local Arabic-first, global enterprise, and generic DIY), then scored on strengths and gaps for that persona, with links to validate each claim. The gaps became the product's opening.

Competitive analysis table for the gym operator persona
Competitive landscape — gym-management SaaS, per persona

What the research changed

Insight

Operators don't experience churn as a metric. They experience it as a member they remember losing. Retention features had to surface individuals, not rates.

Insight

Every incumbent priced and wrote in English for Western studios. Arabic, WhatsApp and EGP weren't localization: they were the product.

Insight

Members' motivation is social and streak-shaped. Gamification had to reward showing up, never punish missing. That's the ethics line the concept is named after.

Personas & jobs to be done

Four audiences, each with a distinct job, each mapped to the surface that serves it.

Persona 1Gym operator & admin

Job: run the front desk and back office (memberships, renewals, QR check-in, billing, branches, staff roles and member comms) without admin overhead, in Arabic, over WhatsApp, priced in EGP.

Serves: partner portal · marketing site
Persona 2Trainer & coach

Job: keep clients progressing and coming back, and grow a career: see who's slipping, program sessions, log attendance and results, climb the accredited standards ladder, and build a reputation that travels between gyms.

Serves: trainer portal · mobile app
Persona 3Member

Job: show up consistently and feel it counting: a reason to come back today, a frictionless way in the door, and visible progress that's social without being shaming.

Serves: mobile app
Persona 4Front-desk staff

Job: get a queue of people through the door on the busiest evening of the week (check-ins, walk-ins, lapsed cards and payments) on one screen, offline-tolerant.

Serves: partner portal — QR scanner mode

Key user flows

Three flows carry the retention promise. Each was mapped step by step, then designed across the surfaces it touches.

Flow 01

Member joins and takes a first streak

Gym invite via WhatsApp Claim account, pick goal QR entry pass issued First check-in scanned Boost earned · streak begins

The moment that matters is the first scan. Everything before it is stripped to the minimum; everything after it rewards return, never punishes absence.

Flow 02

Operator catches a lapse before it's lost

Attendance drops At-risk member surfaced by name Trainer or desk assigned WhatsApp reach-out, one tap Renewal recovered

Research insight applied directly: the interface names a person, not a churn percentage, because that's how operators experience the loss.

Flow 03

Busy-evening check-in at the front desk

Scanner mode open QR scanned Status resolved: valid · lapsed · walk-in Payment or renewal in line Through the door

Designed for a queue and a patchy connection: every state resolvable on one screen, nothing that blocks the next person.

Four surfaces, one system

One design language across a consumer app, two operational portals and a marketing site: shared tokens, different densities.

Dopamine member mobile app home screen
Surface 01 · Member mobile app

A reason to go today

The home screen answers one question: what do I do now? Rank and boost score give the streak a shape, today's points close the loop immediately, and the entry pass is one tap away. Live gym occupancy ("busy 34/50") removes the deterrent of arriving to a packed floor.

  • Progress framed as advancement toward a next rank, never as a broken streak
  • Wearable integration (steps, active minutes) so effort outside the gym still counts
  • Bilingual by construction: Arabic rank names sit natively alongside English
Surface 02 · Gym partner portal

The back office, in one place

Subscribers, packages, billing, branches, trainers, facility and access, plus a live QR scanner mode for the desk. The session schedule is the portal's spine: a week grid across all branches, colour-coded by programme type, trainer assignment visible at a glance. Chain view switches branches without losing context, and language toggles EN/عربي in place.

Dopamine partner portal session schedule
Density by role
Owners get the chain view; the desk gets one task per screen.
Offline-tolerant
Check-in keeps working when the connection doesn't.
Onboarding wizard
CSV migration from notebooks and Excel, guided.
Surface 03 · Trainer portal

Who needs me this week — and where my career goes next

Trainers see their roster ranked by risk, not alphabetically: who has slipped, who is close to a milestone, who just started. Programming, session logging and client notes sit beside it, so the coaching loop closes without leaving the screen.

But retention has a second lever the incumbents ignore: trainers leave too. If the platform is where a trainer's practice grows, the platform is where they stay. So Level Up makes their accreditation ladder a first-class surface.

Level Up — the accredited pathway

Progression made legible

The CIMSPA standard ladder (Gym Instructor through Master Trainer) rendered as a rung diagram with the trainer's current standard marked and the next one named. Requirements for the next rung are a live checklist fed by real platform data: verified sessions, average rating, held specialisms, CPD hours.

  • Every requirement shows evidence, not a claim: "1,247 logged on Dopamine", "4.96 across 47 reviews"
  • The reward is stated in money and clients: rate ceiling EGP 450 → 700, top of member search, specialist referrals
  • CPD tracked against the annual reset, with the consequence spelled out: "6 hours to keep your L4 standard active"
Dopamine trainer portal — Level Up accredited pathway
Motivation, same ethics
Progress toward the next rung, never a penalty for standing still. The same rule as the member app's streaks.
Reputation that travels
Verified sessions and ratings belong to the trainer, not the gym: a portable record across employers.
Revenue, honestly placed
Coach Pro's pay-per-use AI sits in the rail, priced in EGP, off by default. No dark-pattern upsell in the progression flow.
Across all four surfaces · Design system

Shared tokens, different densities

One token set (colour, type scale, radii, states) expressed at three densities: expressive for the consumer app, compact for operational portals, editorial for the marketing site. Bilingual layout rules (mirroring, numerals, Arabic type pairing) are part of the system, not a later pass.

Tokens Components EN / عربي rules WCAG AA
Surface 04 · Marketing website

Selling retention, not features

The site speaks to the operator's real fear, members quietly leaving, and proves it with live numbers in the frame: retention at 90 days, members on a streak, renewals this month. Separate paths for gyms, trainers and members split the audience at the first click.

Dopamine Boost marketing website hero

What I'd validate next

Streak ethics

Does progress framing motivate without the guilt spiral? Test with members who have already lapsed once.

Desk under load

Observe scanner mode on a real Thursday evening queue. It's the only honest usability test for that screen.

Migration friction

Can an owner move off a notebook in one sitting? The onboarding wizard lives or dies here.

Does Level Up retain trainers?

Interview trainers who changed gyms: would a portable, evidenced standard have kept them on the platform, and is the accreditation ladder the right one for Egypt?