The Challenge: Lighting it up.
A small, agile start-up team inside Microsoft is tasked to deliver a fitness wearable that promises 24 hour heart rate tracking, 48 hour battery life, and productivity features on your wrist. Building a fitness tracker with this level of functionality had never been done before. We had to design and light up 3 mobile and 2 desktop apps five months before launch. And there were 11 CEO gateways to pass to get to market.
Microsoft Band 1.0
6 platforms. 5 apps. 1 wearable. 1 year.
A small, agile start-up team inside Microsoft is tasked to deliver a fitness wearable that promises 24 hour heart rate tracking, 48 hour battery life, and productivity features on your wrist. 17 things stood in our way. Building a fitness tracker with this level of functionality had never been done before. We had to design and light up 3 mobile and 2 desktop apps five months before launch. And there were 11 CEO gateways to pass to get to market.
The Approach – Apps
A Design Language For Multiple Platforms
We strove for simple, clean, elegant, and tactile. A UI metaphor that worked across platforms and screens, iconography that told stories with modifiers, and crisp, lean color palettes and font hierarchies. The language allowed us to design once, deploy thrice and balanced well within each OS.
Taming the Schedule By Scaling the Team
To preserve budget, our small team of six scaled to 26 at the right time over the course of the year. When our very skilled dev team was battling against the schedule, I hired nine design developers to focus on ensuring the build mapped to the designs as tested.
THE APPROACH
A Design Language For Multiple Platforms
We strove for simple, clean, elegant, and tactile. A UI metaphor that worked across platforms and screens, iconography that told stories with modifiers, and crisp, lean color palettes and font hierarchies. The language allowed us to design once, deploy thrice and balanced well within each OS.
Taming the Schedule By Scaling the Team
To preserve budget, our small team of six scaled to 26 at the right time over the course of the year. When our very skilled dev team was battling against the schedule, I hired nine design developers to focus on ensuring the build mapped to the designs as tested.
Overcoming The Lack of Test Hardware
Long factory lead times required that we have the Band UI complete long before the app screens. Without v1 hardware to test the experience we would be forced into assumptions. To solve, we invested in resources to build tablet prototypes at the same size / resolution as the band screens to iterate and refine.
Vetting a New Experience with Useability Testing
After creating a 10 week research schedule, we brought on a User Research firm to put the prototype to work testing color preferences, font ramps, comm experiences, and the general UI flow. Once we had EV units off the line, we used the balance of our time remaining putting the band hardware UI through its paces outside the lab.
The Approach – Device
Overcoming The Lack of Test Hardware
Long factory lead times required that we have the Band UI complete long before the app screens. Without v1 hardware to test the experience we would be forced into assumptions. To solve, we invested in resources to build tablet prototypes at the same size / resolution as the band screens to iterate and refine.
Vetting a New Experience with Useability Testing
After creating a 10 week research schedule, we brought on a User Research firm to put the prototype to work testing color preferences, font ramps, comm experiences, and the general UI flow. Once we had EV units off the line, we used the balance of our time remaining putting the band hardware UI through its paces outside the lab.
Contributions
Design Leader for a team of up to 27 product designers, prototypers, researchers, and front end engineers. Responsible for creative direction in partnership with Experience Director. Additional responsibilities included design strategy, project management, design integration and execution, recruiting and retaining an amazing design team, and vendor and studio management.
The Outcome
The day we announced Microsoft Band we had inventory ready in stores. We crossed the finish line on schedule. At the launch party the night we announced, twitter was blowing up and reviews were coming in very solid for a 1st gen device. We were very proud, and very grateful.
For several months, the bands were sold out in stores and online.
Wearing the Microsoft Band, the next big thing in fitness tracking.
The Band is very much a first-version device, one that will benefit tremendously from refinement and improvement in the coming years. And much more excitingly, it’s a remarkably powerful gadget.
Microsoft Band – promising but not perfect.
The recent arrival of the Microsoft Band caught many by surprise; not because it’s the latest tech company entering the incredibly popular fitness-tracker space but because so little was leaked about it ahead of time.
But the unexpected launch made the product’s debut even more exciting.
The Microsoft Band is like a fitbit with benefits.
…Microsoft has made the interface super simple, so that tiny display is perfectly adequate, even when on the move and with sweat running in to your fat piggy eyes (perhaps your experience is different to mine).
We really like the Band as a smartwatch. Perhaps it lacks the full functionality of the Apple Watch or Android Wear, but … that may be no bad thing.
The Outcome
The day we announced Microsoft Band we had inventory ready in stores. We crossed the finish line on schedule. At the launch party the night we announced, twitter was blowing up and reviews were coming in very solid for a 1st gen device. We were very proud, and very grateful.
For several months, the bands were sold out in stores and online.
Wearing the Microsoft Band, the next big thing in fitness tracking.
The Band is very much a first-version device, one that will benefit tremendously from refinement and improvement in the coming years. And much more excitingly, it’s a remarkably powerful gadget.
Microsoft Band – promising but not perfect.
The recent arrival of the Microsoft Band caught many by surprise; not because it’s the latest tech company entering the incredibly popular fitness-tracker space but because so little was leaked about it ahead of time.
But the unexpected launch made the product’s debut even more exciting.
The Microsoft Band is like a fitbit with benefits.
…Microsoft has made the interface super simple, so that tiny display is perfectly adequate, even when on the move and with sweat running in to your fat piggy eyes (perhaps your experience is different to mine).
We really like the Band as a smartwatch. Perhaps it lacks the full functionality of the Apple Watch or Android Wear, but … that may be no bad thing.
