Instabeat is a connected accessory for swimming goggles that captures real-time heart rate, stroke type, and laps. Instant heart rate information is fed into the swimmers' eyes visualizing heart rate zones as LED lines of blue, yellow and red.
Instabeat showcases technology as a tool for improvement by championing the story of inner power as the purest form of motivation. The mark is iconic and shows that the brand is future-forward, at the cutting edge of sport. It recalls the lap lines at the bottom of a pool, focusing on the internal motivation of a swimmer – seeing their goal and striving towards it.
The app uses the same pool measurement line to visualize full swim sessions and laps. Heart rate zones are shown across sessions and laps as colored lines, similar to how they are visualized in the swimmer's goggles.
There are several different views useful to a swimmer, including seeing time and heart rate zones divided into laps, looking at strokes used in a swim and the heart rate zones achieved, and looking at a heart rate zone and seeing lap times.
Beyond breaking a swim session apart, comparing swims over time is also essential. Using the same visual metaphor, heart rate zones and swim distances can be visualized over days, weeks, months and years.
The Process
Some ideas revolved around the cyborg-like nature of this product. Instabeat combines human strength and motivation with digital, state-of-the-art feedback. Other ideas focused on the organic and bold warpaint used by tribal cultures – the LEDs of the product below your eye recall face paint. This idea of inner strength and motivation in war lent itself to an iconic and simple mark.
I thought a lot about expressing the inner motivation that the Instabeat brand would be about. I wanted to convey the idea of finding strength inside yourself and setting goals for yourself, pushing to reach them. The visual of a finish line or marker worked well as an icon representing those little wins that athletes work towards.
Finally I narrowed it down to a shape resembling lines at the bottom of a pool. This worked well as a monogram for the company and as a symbol of what swimmers really use to push themselves further when in the water.
The app design process was a lot of fun. The biggest challenge was finding a glanceable visual that could summarize a full session but also enable a deeper-dive into the specifics.
It was a lot of back-and-forth between the client, the developer and me. An extensive guideline for the app was required to communicate everything.