Sports GPS Watches and Activity Trackers
From the very first watch, TomTom wearables have had a bold interface, focusing on the most important information only, with a simple and easy to navigate structure; unlike most competitor products at the time.
While interacting with our product, users are often on the move, in a context that requires their attention, while sweat might be dripping down their faces.
The Runner-, Multisport- and Golf Watches and the Activity Trackers all share the same design language with great focus on glanceability while being active: information should be read and understood by just glancing at the watch.
My role
I was the first user experience designer to join the TomTom Sport team back in 2013; up until then they had worked with an external design agency for all the design work. The added value of an in-house Sport UX team was quickly recognised and as a result the team grew rapidly.
As one of the leads in our team of 11 designers, I was responsible for several generations of our wearables as well as the supporting applications. Projects started with creating a UX vision for each new generation, followed by delivering that vision in cooperation with visual designers and software development teams in multiple locations throughout Europe.
Constantly running to understand the products and context of use!
Adventurer
The most recent watch, the TomTom Adventurer, brought one of TomTom’s key assets to the small watch screen: routing. Trails helped the users safely explore routes while making sure they would find their way back home again. Testing early software builds myself as well as working with our research team helped us to get the visualisation of the trails, the zoom levels and the discoverability of the feature just right.
The adventurer watch also supported additional outdoor sports such as hiking, trail running, skiing and snowboarding. Ski-lift detection and a built-in altimeter sensor meant we could give the user information about his last run while sitting in the ski-lift.
The Adventurer received a lot of praise and was recognised as a “great watch for the outdoors”.
Tracker
The TomTom Touch was the first activity tracker that could actually keep track of the long term effect of your activity using a sensor that measured body composition (% of body fat and % of muscle mass).
We wanted the tracker to be small and unobtrusive so people would wear it 24/7 allowing us to continuously record their activity and sleep. Therefore the screen was small, which meant careful consideration of what was shown on the wrist vs in the mobile app.
The target group for Touch was quite different from our watch users - usually only starting to get more active and less familiar with sports performance terminology. Therefore we designed the tracker to be playful, simple and encouraging.
