Thrival's original app primarily functioned as an instructional tool, helping customers learn how to use the company's muscle-recovery products. As the company's vision expanded, leadership wanted the app to become more than a simple product instruction application. They wanted Thrival Muscle Recovery to support personalized recovery and fitness recommendations, creator-led workout routines, Thrival product discovery, and future subscription opportunities.

The Original Experience

The initial version of Thrival Muscle Recovery was organized around discovering and following individual Thrival exercises. However, it was very simple and not as immersive as the stakeholders wanted it to be.

The broader strategy we wanted to implement was to transform Thrival Muscle Recovery to an experience that could support longer-term engagement, personalization, content discovery, and future revenue opportunities.

Learning the importance of Design Hierarchy and Information Architecture

Initial Design

Iteration 1

Iteration 2

Iteration and Refinement: My first redesign focused on making more information available. I introduced a scrollable routine list, readable step descriptions, recommended timing, video controls, timer access, and additional exercise information.

This addressed some of the original gaps, but during stakeholder review, they stated the instructional media was still too small and that showing the full routine alongside timer and extra info created unnecessary redundancy.

Prioritizing User Needs: I gave the active exercise substantially more visual priority and kept only the most important information visible during the movement.

Thrival also wanted to explore a future model where fitness creators could contribute content to the platform and participate in a business relationship with the company.

I established the product foundation needed to represent creators and exploring a social media aspect for the app. This will probably be something implementing within the future of the Thrival app as the stakeholders would need to focus on recruiting and partnering with creators first.

Redesigning and rebuilding Thrival has taught me how much product design depends on strategy and turning broad business goals into clear, usable experiences. Many of the ideas I received started as simple high-level requests but the real design work came from figuring out how those ideas should connect, what information users actually needed, and how much complexity the interface could support.

Key Takeaways