Tech Report 1 – Plyo App Review – Paul Mengucci
Background
The app I will be reviewing is a new fitness app called Plyo. Plyo is a fitness app made specifically for students on college campuses. Whenever you walk into a campus gym, your Plyo session will begin. For every minute spent in the gym with the Plyo app open, the user gains another point toward their profile. If you are at the gym with a friend, you can connect your app to theirs to gain double the points per minute. The rewards in the app vary. You can use your points for discounts at local restaurants, BOGO coupons at stores, as well as for raffle submissions for gift cards, clothing, and more. This app helps solve a problem for students trying to be healthy on campus by rewarding them for going to the gym. In addition, food and groceries can be a large expense for students too. Using points to get free food or coupons can help Penn State students a bunch. Two of the main issues this app runs into currently are: You can easily “con” the app and choose a friend you’re working out with without them actually being at the gym, and the app rarely has options for fully-free rewards; most are entries for raffles or coupons.
Analysis
The difference between this app and others is that it is much more localized. Focusing on a few college markets right now allows the app to offer a wide variety of offers for students going to the gym in each of their markets. The specific features are quite simple. To start, a student needs to confirm their student email with the app. Then, turning on location assistance while at the gym allows the app to automatically track the time once you step foot into a campus gym. I have used it the last couple of weeks at Rec Hall and the app works every time. The app does a great job of keeping the tracking to only inside the campus gyms. The moment I step outside of the gym the app immediately ends my workout. My recommendations based off of the limitations mentioned in the background would be to require the app user to pair with a friend who is also checked into the same gym at the same time. If the friend is not checked in at the gym, you should not be allowed to gain the double points. For the rewards, I would suggest including more meaningful rewards that get students fully free meals, smoothies, drinks, gift cards, etc. To make this possible, the app could very easily make the price higher for fully-free rewards or vouchers. Many students would gladly save their points to guarantee their rewards.
Conclusion
I believe this app could be very effective in not only being successful, but also achieving what it is sought out to do: keep students active in such a stressful environment. By working out the issues I brought up in this analysis, they would be on their way towards optimizing the app much better.
References (Work Cited)
Cagle, Beka. “Fitness App Rewards Students with Coupons for Exercising.” The Lantern, 3 Sept. 2019, www.thelantern.com/2019/09/fitness-app-rewards-students-with-coupons-for-exercising/.
“Earn Rewards for Exercising on Campus!” Plyo, 13 Jan. 2020, plyoapp.com/.