Better Than Starbucks

VASA Fitness, a national gym chain, had a real-app problem. Their existing white-label app was a Netpulse template shared across dozens of gym brands. All of VASA's actual member data, accounts, class schedules, payments, KidCare reservations, lived in a separate system called PAC. The two systems didn't talk to each other.

The result was maddening. Members logged into the app, got launched into a browser window, and had to log in again to a different system just to see their class schedule. Two logins, two interfaces, no continuity. KidCare scheduling, the daily-driver feature for the parents who made up most of the morning class population, wasn't available digitally at all. Members called the front desk to book it.

We surveyed over 8,000 VASA members before designing a single screen. The scale of that response was unusual for a project like this and gave us a dataset that was hard to argue with when it came time to make priority calls.

Three findings shaped the whole product. The average member dropped out after 18 months: retention was the core business problem. 70% of members were on iOS: that informed platform priority and design investment. The single loudest frustration across thousands of responses: members couldn't access or manage their own accounts through the app.

The reframe came from grounding everything in one user. A single mom in her early thirties who drops her two kids at KidCare before her morning class. She couldn't book KidCare digitally at all, and she couldn't see her own classes without logging into PAC separately. We wanted her to open the app on Sunday night, schedule her week's KidCare and classes in two minutes, and move on. That was the bar we designed toward.

Throughout the project, I ran guerrilla usability testing sessions at VASA gym locations, walking up to real members with prototypes on a phone, watching them try to complete tasks, and listening to where the design broke down. The first round surfaced filter pattern problems in both class scheduling and KidCare booking, plus friction in the membership purchase flow. After making changes, I went back to the gyms and put the revised prototypes in front of members again. The friction points were gone. That second round gave us the conviction to lock the designs and move into development.

Phase 1 launched in November 2019, in time for the Thanksgiving marketing push. Less than six months from kickoff to both app stores. The numbers came in fast: 300k installs within three months, $150k flowing directly through the app, 4.3-star rating across nearly 7,000 reviews (still holds today).

Shortly after launch, a message from Mehul Chaudhari made its way to our team: VASA's CEO, CMO, and CFO were using the app to book classes and called it awesome. They noted that Starbucks had 70 developers on their app and couldn't release it in the same timeframe or for the same cost.

The trust built during Phase 1 led VASA to bring Neudesic back for two additional projects during the COVID recovery period in mid-2020, when every budget line was being scrutinized: a tablet sales tool and a self-service support site. Phases 2 and 3 of the mobile app added member referrals, gamification, profile customization, and a full rewards program integrated with a third-party vending platform.

This project reinforced where design has the most impact. Not just in the screens, but in how decisions get made. Helping a team converge. Giving developers enough context to build with confidence. Testing assumptions with real members. Making tradeoffs explicit so the product can ship. The platform tradeoff was the call that taught me the most: choosing to ship a strong iOS experience on time rather than a mediocre experience on both required the conviction to stand behind an imperfect launch.