Overview
Les Mills is an international brand known for its first-class fitness programs. Clubs worldwide license classes, and fitness instructors become Les Mills certified to teach these classes. As design lead, I collaborated with Les Mills to create Les Mills Connect, a centralised hub where both clubs and instructors can access all their connected platforms and content via single sign-on. This initiative also aimed to introduce capabilities that would allow for the decommissioning of outdated platforms, thus contributing to a less frustrating digital experience.
My Role
Design Lead
Discovery planning cycles
Workshop facilitation
User research planning
User research facilitation
UX/UI design
Multiple platforms and logins
During our initial discovery phase, we designed a dashboard to test with existing Les Mills clubs and instructors globally. We found that many users, who often worked at multiple locations and were also instructors themselves, faced the challenge of logging into numerous platforms—sometimes up to six—with different login credentials. Working closely with the technical team, we developed a new experience using Auth0 to enable seamless navigation across platforms. Les Mills Connect was intentionally designed to mirror the instructor and club user sides, allowing users to effortlessly switch between spaces without the need to learn or adapt to different navigation patterns.
Flows documenting the new single sign on experience across platforms
Accessing all platforms desktop view
Accessing all platforms mobile view
Creating a easy access and highly adaptable platform
Another critical insight from interviews conducted was that the Les Mills business model differed slightly from country to country, affecting what instructors and clubs prioritised as core tasks and resulting in differing pain points.
In the first release, we delivered a highly modular platform across three initial markets, reaching over 55,000 instructors. Due to its intentional design, Les Mills Connect can grow and adapt depending on the market. We created a robust CMS that each region could control while still maintaining the Les Mills Connect look and feel. With each user having a singular identity across the entire Les Mills Ecosystem, analytics became more robust and insightful than ever before.
Tiles can be added, removed, arranged and updated per market
The covid effect and it’s impact on the fitness industry
The Covid lockdowns significantly impacted the fitness industry, leading to clubs losing instructors due to relocation or career changes, while many instructors faced unemployment. Strict Covid measures further exacerbated the situation, making it challenging for clubs to find replacements promptly when instructors fell ill. With no official platform for connection, both parties relied on informal methods like word of mouth or Facebook groups.
To address this, we introduced the capability for clubs and instructors to connect within Les Mills Connect. Instructors can create detailed profiles, including their availability, and browse job listings. Simultaneously, clubs can post job listings and search for instructors in their vicinity, saving potential candidates for future reference.
Within just three months of launching this feature, clubs in the three markets had posted over 5,059 job listings, with 2,500 instructors indicating their availability.
Instructors can create rich profiles
Finding instructors
Creating job listings