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Big impact from tiny screens: Fitbit wearables are at the heart of a health and wellness journey that millions of people experience everyday. Over time, these wearables have also grown to include a number of smart features, thoughtfully created to be simple and intuitive, while remaining out of the way. While working at Fitbit, Analía led the design of some of these top selling and best rated wearables, including the Versa, Charge 2, and Alta family. This design work informed early product strategy, as well as collaborative work with many cross-disciplinary teams including Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering, Firmware, and R&D.

While working across wearables, some big areas of impact included working on shared design systems, a redesign of FitOS, and designing an innovative, heart-rate based guided breathing experience named Relax.

Work Included:
Product Strategy, UX and UI Design, Hardware and ID Consulting, Design Systems, Prototyping, Animation, Branding

A smartwatch should not feel like a smartphone on your wrist. Designed for holistic health and fitness, Versa was created in support of positive behavior change. The design and research for Versa led to a refinement of FitOS, challenging the paradigm of most app-centric smartwatches while delivering a tailored experience around insights and intuitive wearable interactions.

One of the biggest (and funnest!) challenges while working on Charge 2 was designing a number of interactive features on a tiny screen — with very simple interactions and only one button to play with. Creating really fun and organic celebration animations was part of that process. The Charge 2 was the first tracker to include alarms, exercise tracking by types, notifications, a stopwatch, and a brand new Fitbit feature named Relax. It has sold millions of units and earned Fitbit’s highest Amazon product rating.

Alta was the first Fitbit tracker to include smart notifications for text messages, calendar events, and phone calls. With a longer vertical screen than previous Fitbit devices, the design of the navigation and features also presented the unique opportunity of creating landscape and portrait views of content. As the first tracker with a larger display, Alta also led the way with new and fun goal celebrations that influenced other trackers to follow.

Relax is a feature that leverages your heart rate data to guide you through a personalized guided breathing session, supported by biofeedback. Analía led the definition and design of this feature for Charge 2, which has since been included in all new Fitbit devices. To this day it’s incredible to read about the benefits Relax can bring to users, from those using it to manage daily stress to those with more chronic conditions.

Fitbit Versa is the Apple Watch’s strongest competitor.

Gizmodo

Fitbit Charge 2 is the best fitness tracker, period.

Gizmodo

Gizmodo

Android Police

The Charge 2 constitutes the culmination of Fitbit’s efforts both in design and features

Android Police

Android Police

The Fitbit Charge 2 is leaps and bounds better than the Charge HR, which is saying a lot since the HR was our most recommended fitness tracker.

Macworld

The new Fitbit Alta is a sleeker, more stylish fitness band than the company has attempted before, and with its launch, the wearables market leader has hit the new sweet spot.

Macworld

Macworld

a product that did not take advantage of competitive advantages in time – Technique on vc.ru

Fitbit has a very sad fate: losing to all sorts of faster competitors, falling asset values, inability to use temporary competitive advantages. But now Google is buying the company and completely completing its takeover deal.

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What does this mean and why? The first thing that comes to mind is using Fitbit users’ health data to broadcast their own advertising campaigns. But as Google said, “Fitbit users’ health data will not be used for Google ads and will be kept separate from other data.”

We seem to have a new anti-data collection trend. Recall the week-long story with WhatsApp and the extremely increased popularity of the Telegram and Signal messengers, which assure the complete security of personal data.

But it’s ironic that it only lists data related to a Fitbit user’s health and wellness, but doesn’t say anything about non-fitness related data at all. Or maybe even this data will be stored separately from other Google advertising data.

In any case, the recent deal is a good reason to remember how Fitbit created its product: what positioning and target audience were taken as a basis, and also what is the reason for losing to other competitors.

Photo / “Fitbit Summary” by johnpeck2 is marked with CC0 1.0

The idea and positioning of the product

Generation Y was mainly interested in such smart devices. Still, the interest in one’s health and the desire to correct/improve one’s current state is the prerogative of mainly adults, but supporting lifestyle with the help of technological products is clearly not tough on Generation X, who either don’t particularly like technology or have difficulty interacting with it.

Essentially, Fitbit was selling the best version of themselves to their target audience. At the same time, they created a feeling of complete support and guarantee from above: to shift all the worries about monitoring their health to another “subject” and give them the opportunity to simultaneously engage in other, as a rule, mental affairs.

It would seem an ideal niche for making money. But for some reason, Fitbit failed to maintain its $10 billion fortune and soon dropped to $1 billion. The main problem here was the inability to maintain a temporary competitive advantage, because competitors were able to adapt and recreate the value of such a product much faster.

From indirect competitors – step counting in mobile applications, and from direct competitors – Apple Watch.

In the first case, we are dealing with a simpler adaptation and development: the absence of “hardware” that needs to be put on the production line, cost reduction. In the second case, it is simply a huge amount of resources and a brand, which is an unfair competitive advantage for Apple.

And here the question immediately arises: so why don’t they take the niche of cheap smartwatches against the backdrop of Apple? Again, they were not the only representatives of the market. You can claim to be a First, but without a lot of sales – in the eyes of consumers, you will not be number 1, which will be remembered and will occupy a niche of association in the minds of users: “Fitbit = inexpensive smartwatches. ”

Moreover, the lesson for Fitbit was the inability to tie a customer to their product. Without Retention (customer return), consumers move on to other, more interesting offers.

What is the product for the consumer?

Personal trainer for sale to improve health and optimize time.

Main function: to give the feeling that you are becoming the best version of yourself.

What is the target audience for the product?

1. The middle class in need of optimizing their own time.

2. Generation Y (X and Z, of course, too, but to a much lesser extent), interested in their own health, but willing to shift care of it to a professional.

3. Fashion-influenced people: here it must be understood that such a disruptive innovation, associated with the ability to make a better version of oneself, usually receives wide interest even from those who were not previously interested in health.

4. Technocrats: lovers of technological novelties and unusual innovations.

What is the reason for the appearance?

On the one hand, life has been accelerating (and accelerating), and therefore we need products that allow us to do several things at the same time and be more productive. On the other hand, the gradual promotion of a healthy lifestyle.

For many people, especially the middle class, it was necessary to skillfully maintain a work-life balance, and therefore such a product very well fit the needs of such an audience.

More articles analyzing products discussed in the community in our telegram channel: https://t.me/kauriot

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