adidas miCoach is an interactive training service for anyone who wants to train for his or her favorite sport, general fitness or just for fun. Bringing the knowledge and experience of adidas’ elite coaching partners to the masses, miCoach provides users with real-time coaching and all the tools they need to track performance and monitor progress to get the results they want. The breadth of the offer includes a free to access web platform and training community with hundreds of training plans, free mobile apps as well as a comprehensive range of tracking devices.

adidas approached us to design the user interface for an all-in-one smart running-watch that would liberate the athlete from cumbersome accessories, yet deliver the most complete and professional training experience to date. For the first time, runners will be able to track their runs using GPS mapping, monitor their heart rate off their wrist, listen to their favorite music and get real-time coaching.

To achieve that, we packed the miCoach service into a stamp-sized color touch screen screen, without compromising the abundance of features or the usability of the device. It needed to be clear and unmistakable under all conditions.

We used prototyping to evaluate our design from the very beginning. Verifying our UI framework, detail interactions and testing our data visualization with real users ensured that our decisions were based on insight and not merely on assumption.

We introduced an intuitive separation of the functional areas of the wearable into four domains: Time, Workout, Music and Settings. The coached workout screen features a new, very compact, yet extremely legible visualization of coaching instructions and training data.

We minimize the cognitive workload of the user by relying on color conventions and apply those as UI accent colors. This allows communicating implicitly the training zone for heart-rate or pace without using additional screen space. Our new text input method is another example of intuitive design. Using transitions and timing of character lanes is here crucial for user guidance.

The final product is a user interface that disrupts the common template of sport watch interaction. We applied the strongest conventions from smart phones, which keeps the learning curve flat. We introduced new solutions for data visualization that cater the need for extreme glanceability. Our interface avoids ambiguity and allows users to focus on the workout without thinking of the technology. Not only makes it the Smart Run device pleasant to use, it also ensures the integrity of the workout data and no efforts are ever lost. Increased training efficiency enables runners to achieve their goals much easier.

Transforming the miCoach experience into a watch is a difficult mission. Not only did we succeed with it, we even improved. We achieved this by challenging assumptions and the status quo of an established product. A wrist UI that communicates precise data while running near the physical limits and under adverse environmental conditions needs very careful design and testing.

Instead of "Technology first", our approach was "user first", because the experience counts more than features only. Our client shared this philosophy and together we lifted miCoach to a new level while maintaining the look and feel of the brand.