MapMyRun on the watch was meant to be experienced while running - and sometimes while running fast. Our goal was to get you connected and going, focusing on the small interactions and indicators that let you know you were good-to-go. We wanted the watch to auto-detect your shoes, and allow you to quickly choose your specific activity, offering form and fitness coaching on your first run. Launch the app, press START, and go! We wanted continuous scanning so your shoes were always in-sync, data-smoothing so we didn’t over-coach on every little bump in the road, and easy syncing so you never lost sight of your goals. The only way to make it work so seamlessly was to build our own watch together. What started as a software project quickly scaled up to a co-developed co-branded Galaxy Watch Active2 Under Armour EditionTM, announced at Samsung’s Unpacked developer conference in August of 2019, and released in October of the same year. We had our work cut out for us that year.

We worked very closely with Samsungs device engineers to develop the data sensors on the Galaxy Watch Active2. Engineers and product managers from Korea would often travel to our Austin, TX facility to work with our device engineers and exercise scientists to fine-tune the devices heart rate, GPS and accelerometer. This was an amazing opportunity to optimize our data sampling and coaching experience, giving us the ability to provide incredibly responsive tips and updates while running. Multiple testing sessions resulted in the most-accurate consumer-level fitness tracking device available at the time. As device and engineering teams worked on the hardware integrations, I kicked off visioning for the MapMyRun experience, including the connected footwear sync and form-coaching feature.

I also began building out our own Samsung UI Kit for the MapMyRun app on the Galaxy Watch, hoping to leverage Samsung’s OneUI design system for the overall look and feel, only introducing custom elements when necessary. Using the inherent system UI for the basics meant users weren’t forced to learn new interactions and UI elements while mid-run - our buttons were the same size, shape and position of the system OS buttons; our transitions and interactions followed the system UX, doing exactly what you expected them to do when you interacted with them. This allowed us to build out basic versions of the entire app quickly, freeing up time to focus on the unique moments where Under Armour and MapMyRun could shine.

We packed a lot of features into a small screen, and coherently explaining them to the stakeholders was paramount. I created flow documents for all use cases, highlighting the visual, audio and haptic experiences in easy-to-read documents. This helped everyone from engineering to marketing to customer happiness understand the intent of a given feature, keeping us all on the same page throughout the development of the app and watch. Onboarding users was a particularly tricky process, with two physical products needing to connect across multiple software products to communicate with each other. There were several pain points and failure potentials, which would lead to an overall dissatisfaction with the entire experience, resulting in low ratings and returned products. This was an absolute non-starter. The onboarding experience had to be flawless. Using detailed documentation, we were able to identify opportunities to smooth out the experience, and provide fallbacks when things did go awry. Customer happiness was especially well-versed in providing fast and accurate assistance, thanks to the meticulous reference material available.

One of our primary principles was to always celebrate the athlete, no matter their goal or performance. You could be aiming for your first mile or your fastest pace, and we’d cheer you on the entire time just for trying. The Progress-to-Goal interface used a hi-viz green gauge and big bold stats, keeping you motivated and informed throughout your run. The Pace and Form Coaching gauge only alerted you when you fell outside a (generously wide) range from your stated goal, using gentle haptics, minimal negative feedback, and incredibly useful coaching tips to get you back on track - which we would celebrate the moment you made it back. Hitting your distance or duration goal triggered a brief celebratory moment, then went right back to tracking and coaching, allowing you to keep going if you felt the motivation to.

In addition to the powerfully simple goal-setting and tracking features, we introduced the ability to customize your workout screens, giving the user ownership over their in-workout experience.

We also leveraged MapMyRun’s popular Training Plans feature, reminding you on your watch if you had a pre-set workout planned for that day. We were working on syncing Training Plans and the on-watch Goal Setting feature to auto-populate your goal for that Run.

User testing the wearable app and all it’s features was not as straightofrward as uploading a prototype to usertesting.com and gathering impressions - we needed our target to experience this product in the wild. Lucky for us, we had a healthy group of willing participants right there in the office! We’d load test builds onto a beta device and hand it to someone about to head out on a run, getting immediate, accurate, real-time feedback on the entire experience. We also seeded a few devices to leading athletes, getting a truly realistic assessment on the product and app. These actually resulted in some videos for a short series Under Armour produced to help educate runners about the importance of their running form.

We partnered with noted agency We Are Royale to produce some slick promotional videos and marketing stills for the watch, including the announcement reel shown at the developer conference. I contributed to the art direction, providing UX and UI guidance for on-wrist mockups

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2 Under Armour Edition (whew) was released in October of 2019, along with a collection of upgraded wearables by Samsung, like the Fit2 and larger-format Galaxy Watch. In hindsight, releasing a bunch of “competing” products at the same time was a miscalculation and sales, while steady, fell short of expectations despite our high-quality marketing push. Our Form Coaching feature, on the other hand, was very successful, and we quickly ported it onto the mobile app, and eventually onto Garmin devices as an optional 3rd-party data screen.
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