When I train, I don't want mental exercise, only physical. I want to get to the gym, open the app, and have it tell me today's exercises, how each weight compares with last session, and how much to lift. That's all. I want the app to do all of the mental exercise for me.
To enter weight and reps, I chose dragging very early. Typing numbers means tapping keys, and arrows take up the screen. A watch version also matters a lot to people who train, and to me, so I'd like it there one day. That means the interface has to be extremely simple.
The first version had two separate drags, one for weight and one for reps. I used it every day for nearly two weeks. It was fairly OK. But using it, I felt something was missing: a graph comparing today's weight with last time's. Once the graph was there, one drag made more sense than two: up and down for weight, left and right for reps.
At first baseline was only for me. I didn't care if anyone else used it. Then I realised that might be why I wasn't consistent, and staying consistent is the point of the app. So I added a social side, to feel some pressure. The feed came from another app I built and dropped once I saw that idea was too far from reality. In baseline it fits well.
I didn't want too much pressure, though, or a board about who lifts the most. The board scores how true you are to yourself. How much you lift, and how often, don't count. I set it to score over twelve weeks, and a missed day doesn't roll over into the next week. Say four sessions a week and do four, and you rank the same as someone who says seven and does seven.
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