MyxLabs
A Strategic Business Design for the Future of Personalized Wellness
A Strategic Business Design for the Future of Personalized Wellness
The $45.2B performance supplement industry is suffering from a trust crisis. Consumers are overwhelmed by choice, skeptical of "pseudo-science," and concerned about safety. Existing solutions are either generic (retail) or slow (mail-order kits). We discovered a significant gap between high market growth and high user frustration due to a lack of trust, personalization, and convenience.
The result is MyxLabs, a phygital, AI-driven system designed to deliver personalized, adaptive nutrition through a mobile app and smart vending machines, rebuilding consumer trust from the ground up. The project explores how performance supplements can be made trustworthy, engaging, and adaptive for athletes and health-conscious users.
Through Porter’s Five Forces analysis and competitor benchmarking, we identified a "Blue Ocean" opportunity between generic retail supplements and expensive, slow-delivery custom kits.
Users don't trust "influencer" brands. 78% of our interviewed users relied on peer recommendations over ads, signaling a need for radical transparency. The market is filled with confusing labels and vague claims, making it hard for users to make informed choices.
Current solutions are static (buy a tub, use it for a month). Human bodies are dynamic. We found a gap for a product that adapts daily to sleep, recovery, and training load. Consumers expect tailored supplements that match their unique DNA, lifestyle, and goals, but the market offers generic products.
Performance supplements are more likely to cause harm in young users due to misleading marketing and poor labeling. Forgetting supplements or consuming random products is risky. Placing smart dispensers at the point of use (gyms) solves the logistics friction of the user journey.
Our approach was a structured exploration from discovering the gap in the industry to finding the most appropriate design systems that can deliver the value for customer as well as the business. This was a multi-stage iterative process with rigorous research into all aspects of a business innovation.
We began with extensive market research, using frameworks like Porter's Five Forces and SWOT analysis to identify a strategic opening. This led us to focus on performance supplements, a high-growth area ripe for disruption. Through trend analysis and plotting them on time vs impact matrix, we found the most relevant trends that could shape our opportunity. This gave us our first opportunity statement: Revolutionize performance supplements with personalized, batch-tested formulations that are safe, effective, and compliant.
Porter's Five Forces or Business Environment analysis: We analyzed the industry friction and the competitive intensity. High barriers to entry in retail and high buyer power (users switching brands constantly) revealed the industry's weakness: Lack of Loyalty.
Through surveys with 110+ participants and in-depth interviews, we synthesized four key user archetypes. We focused our design and testing on two primary groups: the detail-oriented 'Performance Purist' and the curious 'Pragmatic Experimenter'. User insights drove the evolution of our value proposition, shifting from 'Convenience' to 'Adaptability'.
User Achetypes: Instead of the persona framework, we chose a deeper archetype framework that gave us more human-centered definition for our different user segments.
We used MoSCOW prioritization to define the MVP. To ensure feasibility, we rigorously prioritized features for the launch. This was then used to create a concept that could be used for user and usability testing with SUS evaluation that gave us a SUS score of 79.5. Meaning that the system works for the target user and we could move to the business modeling and financials for the same. Here, we used business model canvas and revenue forecasting to find the break even, required funding and go-to-market strategy.
Usability Testing: We conducted usability testing at our university gym where our target users are using the performance supplements. This testing was done with app usage, heat mapping of the vending machine, SUS questionnaire and the results were documented.
MyxLabs combines an AI-powered app and smart vending machines to deliver real-time, personalized supplements. The app tracks goals, biometrics, and habits, while the vending machine dispenses adaptive blends synced to user data -creating a seamless, science-driven wellness experience.
This ecosystem is providing the users transparency and personalization in an accessible interface.
Mobile App: An AI-powered companion that handles onboarding, tracks user data from wearables and journaling, and dynamically adjusts supplement plans to evolve with the user's needs. It also offers tracking dietary intake from user's food by just clicking photo of the meal. The repository provides information on all different nutrients and supplements while journal allows adding specific notes.
Smart Vending Machine: A physical vending machine located in gyms and wellness centers that provides convenient, on-demand access to the user's personalized, freshly-blended supplements.
A render of the smart vending machine
MyxLabs reimagines performance nutrition through the fusion of AI, biometrics, and smart delivery. By connecting a data-driven app with intelligent vending machines, it creates a seamless ecosystem that adapts to individual needs in real time. The result is a personalized, transparent, and engaging wellness experience that empowers users to take control of their health - anytime, anywhere.
We conducted usability testing for our App usage by providing our target users with the mockups and for our concept of vending machines, we tested the placement of different features through heat mapping. We also tested the prioritization of app features using "Buy me a Feature" and to test the system, we surveyed through SUS where we got an overall SUS score of 79.5.
App Usability Success
The app prototype scored an average of 79.5 on the System Usability Scale (SUS), falling between "Good" and "Excellent" and validating the intuitive design of the onboarding and tracking flows.
Vending Machine Insights
User testing with a physical mockup revealed key interaction expectations. Users overwhelmingly preferred the QR scanner at the top-right of the screen and a dispensing zone at the mid-right for easy access.
This project taught a design of a business from scratch when you don't start with a problem instead you look for opportunities within a particular industry by looking at business environment, trends, market dynamics and take decisions based on what the data tells you. It reinforced my belief that research creates the strongest foundation for log-term decision making that leads to sustainabile business opportunities. This gave me a toolkit for business innovations from real user research and ethnographic insights that directly impacted the core value proposition of our proposed business venture.
This project was an exercise in translating ambiguity into a viable business case. My most critical strategic decision was pivoting our pitch from a "tech product" to a "trust platform." By listening to user fears about contamination, I directed the team to prioritize radical transparency features over gamification. Leading the cross-functional alignment between physical industrial design and digital UI required constant negotiation of constraints. This experience honed my ability to prioritize features using the MoSCOW method, ensuring we delivered a lean, investment-ready MVP that balanced user desirability with business feasibility.