Fitbit Ionic

The Fitbit Ionic is Fitbit’s first true smartwatch. Ionic is the successor to the Fitbit Surge, a GPS sport watch. With a ubiquitous rise in smartwatches, Fitbit saw an opportunity to create a device designed to not only be an everyday watch, but a watch centered around your fitness and health.

As a design lead for the activity and exercise team, I worked with lead designer on watches, product management, and engineering to identify opportunities based on Fitbit’s core product offerings. The collaborative effort resulted in the evolution of Fitbit's on-wrist exercise experience. I took advantage of the Ionic’s ultra bright high-contrast display by including full-bleed photography into the design of the exercise experience.

Ionic is Fitbit’s first waterproof watch so it was natural that swim tracking was added as a core exercise experience. Fitbit automatically tracks and records your laps, stroke type, distance, and more. With the Fitbit mobile app, you can then review your exercise and track your performance over time. I addressed how exercise users interacted with the watch since touch displays are less responsive under water. The solution was to redefine the relationship of how physical buttons functioned on the watch during an exercise. Through user testing, the redefined interaction benefited other exercise experiences such as running since people were looking for a more tactile experience.

We also improved on SmartTrack™ by building Run Detect. Ionic recognizes when you’re running and automatically enters Run Mode — starting GPS so you can see key run stats on your device. Ionic will also automatically pause when you do, so your pace and duration are accurate. I designed a seamless experience that not only lets users go out and run without thinking of starting their watch, but it also educated first-time users with how Run Detect works, giving them control of the overall experience.

• credits

• Arvi Raquel-Santos// Design Lead for Activity & Exercise, UI & UX Design
• Todd Diemer // UX Design
• Lawson Kight // Design Lead, Watches
• Annie Shih // Front-End Mobile Engineer
• Graham Keggi // Product Manager
• Work completed at Fitbit