Simplify Garmin Connect mobile application

Open the prototype

user research

ux & ui design

side project

ℹ️

This is a side project I made because I use and love my Garmin watch a lot and I felt like there was room for improvements in the mobile application. I don’t have the full context of Garmin teams and I don’t pretend to do better than them! The feedbacks I read and got from Garmin users were pretty positive :)

Increase mobile app usage to drive brand retention

Note: this start point is fictional

Garmin wants to create a strong emotional attachment between their devices and users, so that people stay with Garmin when they buy a new watch or GPS device. They know that a lot of this attachment is related to the device itself, but they feel like the mobile application Garmin Connect could play a bigger role here.

A statistic does not please Garmin stakeholders:

50%

of users open the application only after uploading a new activity, and never between two activities

Garmin wants to open a research project about this to improve this metric and therefore help the company key result including in the global strategy:

90% of Garmin customer renewing their device buy a Garmin one

My goal here is to increase the mobile application usage (the product outcome) to drive customer retention and meet the company key result above (the business outcome).

Finding and defining the problem
we want to solve

Finding and defining the problem we want to solve

Methods

We want to know:

Why 50% of users don’t open the app between two activities
How could we encourage users to use more the Connect app

To help us discover this, I drove several research:

first, I read the App Store and Google Play reviews to have an overview of users' satisfaction
then I scanned some reddit threads to dig into some users questions and feedbacks
with this material and my assumptions, I could define a user interview guide and I drove 4 semi-guided interviews to understand how users use the app, their motivations and frustrations

About the interviews

I interviewed 4 participants (names have been changed):

James, 30, living in Bordeaux - expert user
John, 35, living in Metz - intermediate user
Emily, 40, living in Le Mans - intermediate user
Edward, 37, living in Angers - neophyte user

I prepared a list of questions and then conducted the interview for 30 to 45min. I wanted to know how they use sports app in general and what were their pain points with the Garmin app, I asked a few questions about:

how often do they do sports
for which sports they track their activities
if they use other tracking apps and why
why they track their activities, what are their motivations
how they use their devices and Garmin Connect application
their opinion about the app, their frustrations, etc.
etc.

Raw insights

Organized insights

Key learnings

After organizing the feedbacks I got, I extracted the key learnings of my interviews.

The app is seen as a very complete and useful app…

“I don’t have a lot of reproaches to make”, James

“It is very modular”, Emily

… but also seems to be quite complex with a lot of information

“There is a lot of things so sometimes it’s hard to find what you are looking for”, Edward

“I'm discovering new sections by browsing it in front of you”, James

Navigation is not intuitive and people have troubles finding most important information (important data is available but not always displayed at the right place)

”When you open the app it’s great, it feels ergonomic but when I start navigating I’m a bit lost because I can’t see the navigation anymore”, Emily

“I don’t even know where to find my activities”, John

Competition and rewards seem to be great levers to motivate people doing sport and use the app

“I try to get points to level up and get badges”, John

“I went for a run several time just to beat a friend”, Emily

After this, I posted a survey on reddit with the same questions as my interviews but with closed answers, to confirm or unconfirm some learnings.
I could nuance some answers I received with the interviews:

for example, the users I interviewed were very focused on sport performances. The survey allowed me to understand that health statistics were also important for other categories of users
there is a blurry line for the social side of the app: 3 of 4 people I interviewed use Strava more for social interactions about sports, but only 27% of people who answered the survey use it

So I decided to focus on 2 main subjects here with two How Might We that are related to our main goal: make users use the app more often and create a strong emotional attachment between Garmin and the users.

for example, the users I interviewed were very focused on sport performances. The survey allowed me to understand that health statistics were also important for other categusers
there is a blurry line for the social side of the app: 3 of 4 people I interviewed use Strava more for social interactions about sports, but 27% of people who answered the survey use it

for example, the users I interviewed were very focused on sport performances. The survey allowed me to understand that health statistics were also important for other categusers
there is a blurry line for the social side of the app: 3 of 4 people I interviewed use Strava more for social interactions about sports, but 27% of people who answered the survey use it

for example, the users I interviewed were very focused on sport performances. The survey allowed me to understand that health statistics were also important for other categusers
there is a blurry line for the social side of the app: 3 of 4 people I interviewed use Strava more for social interactions about sports, but 27% of people who answered the survey use it

How might we?

⭐️

How might we help neophite and intermediate sporties easily find the information they need while keeping the app as completed as it is for the experts?

Success metric

The main KPI we want to improve is:

More than 50% of the users open the app between two sport activities

We can also monitor this metric: user satisfaction increases about the app.

Exploring solutions

Benchmark

I started by doing some benchmarking, focusing on:

simplicity and “going to the essential” apps
also competition and playful apps since Garmin has this competition side

I benchmarked sport apps with Strava, Nike Run Club, Nike Training Club but also a health app with Withings and an app known for gamification: Duolingo.

What I found interesting with this benchmark:

The social part in Nike and Withings apps is not very important but they still make an important focus on performances, levels and badges; with a great simplicity.

I started by doing some benchmarking, focusing on:

simplicity and “going to the essential” apps
also competition and playful apps since Garmin has this competition side

I benchmarked sport apps with Strava, Nike Run Club, Nike Training Club but also a health app with Withings and an app known for gamification: Duolingo.

What I found interesting with this benchmark:

The social part in Nike and Withings apps is not very important but they still make an important focus on performances, levels and badges; with a great simplicity.

Strava makes a great job displaying a lot of information but with focusing on the most important ones first.

Compared to these apps, Garmin Connect seems a bit old-fashion and compact and it may interfere with readability.

Mockups and prototype

My goal was not to redesign the entire app here so I decided to focus on the main screens related to my “How Might We”:

homepage and navigation (simplification, focus on what is more important)
activity pages (with a first section helping every one get the main information and an access to more detailed data)
profile pages (to simplify and highlight levels and badges)

I also used these evolutions to try a new visual design for the app, because I got some feedbacks that it was not very friendly. It might be too far from the Garmin brand guidelines to I also made a version with current colors (see last screens).

Open the prototype

Homepage and “More” navigation item. I highlighted the last activity and reorganized the “more” list to simplify it

Homepage and “More” navigation item. I highlighted the last activity and reorganized the “more” list to simplify it

Activity page: I focused on the most important data on the first page and allowed expert to go deeper with the “See full data” CTA

Activity page: I focused on the most important data on the first page and allowed expert to go deeper with the “See full data” CTA

Advanced data for one activity

Profile pages is splitted into three sections: your profile, your stats and your activities

If you are into the levels and badges game, you can access these pages from your profile

A second UI test with current Garmin Connect colors

A second UI test with current Garmin Connect colors

Open the prototype

Next steps

In real life we would drive user tests to help us define if our evolutions will help our goal or if we need to adjust or start again before taking the project to the next step with specifications and development.

I would be happy to get your feedbacks about this project, on both the methodology and the result so feel free to contact me!