Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

1. The opportunity that I would like to pursue comes from a problem that I'm sure a lot of people, like me, encounter almost every day of their lives. That is when the gym is too busy and you either have to wait for a certain machine or bench to open up or when that certain machine has so many people waiting for it that you just decide to change your entire workout for the day, so you don't have to wait to do certain exercises. The opportunity would be simple, but it could be used in every gym in the country. There's two things that can be done. The first would just be to set up a couple general cameras in the gym and the live feed could be broadcasted on the gym's website, so people can see when the gym is busy or not in real time. The second is each gym can release their own app that tells every if a machine is open or not.

2. Who: anyone who goes to the gym or might want to start going to the gym
What: Machines and benches end up having a wait time with them
Why: This happens because there is either not enough of a certain type of machine or there are way too many people in the gym at the same time

3. Testing the who: I think everyone who has gone to the gym has encountered this problem and knows that when you are in the middle of a workout and have to stop to wait on a machine it is not enjoyable. Not everyone goes to the gym so not everyone has this problem.
Testing the what: Not all machines get crowded, so this opportunity would be used most effectively on some machines over others
Testing the why: Not every single gym has this problem because some gyms are massive and have so many of each machine that they don't need to worry about this problem. It seems though that a majority of gyms do have this problem and the opportunity could be useful in a lot of them.

4. I interviewed 5 people and I made sure to interview someone who never goes to the gym so that this information could be relevant to everyone. Out of all the people that I interviewed that go to the gym regularly all of them said that they have had at least one of their workouts completely ruined due to just sitting around waiting for a machine to open. They said that this stall in their workout really hinders what they were trying to accomplish in the workout and they hate it. They all agreed that if some system could be made where you could find out easily if a machine was open or if the gym was crowded it would be very helpful. The person who never goes to the gym said that all of this stuff really wasn't relevant to him and didn't affect him at all. But I did ask him if he ever plans on going to the gym any time in the future, and he said that he probably will eventually. So the information will still be relevant to him even if it is not right now.

5. I now know that almost everyone who goes to the gym has this problem and hates it as much as I do. I think there is a real opportunity here to help with the inconvenience.