Samsung Health
2014
In the fall of 2014, Samsung came to Odopod with a challenge. Their next flagship phone would have an advanced array of health sensors and they needed to turn their health and fitness offering into more than just another stock app. At the same time, Google was rolling out Material Design to its new versions of Android, and Samsung needed to adapt to the new visual language.
Odopod identified a new market opportunity for Samsung Health and designed a brand-new product to fit, with entirely new content architecture, programs, and visual design. As one of three designers, I shaped many components of the design system. I built a robust system of graphs and charts, helped define the color theory of the application categories, built the tile system for the S Health dashboard, and managed the documentation of the pattern library and annotations.
Our clients at Samsung were thrilled with the results. We regularly received prototypes of the new app from Samsung to test and refine during our design process. The documentation was particularly well-received, and our clients have gone on to expand upon the original vision with new features and additional refinements.
Timeline
4 months
Team
Art Director
Visual Designers (2)
Front-End Web Engineer
Role
Visual Designer,
Odopod
Setting Healthy Goals
Samsung Health was designed around three goals — Be More Active, Feel More Rested, and Eat Healthier — that contributed to a user’s overall feeling of wellness. Framing the product in terms of simple goals made it approachable and friendly to users who might be experiencing the benefits of health tracking for the first time.
The Be More Active goal included activity and vital sign tracking.
The Feel More Rested goal included a sleep tracking system, with simple phone-based time tracking and rich device-based sleep cycle tracking.
The Eat Healthier goal provided calorie burn calculations and allowed users to track meals and hydration.
Health Metric Tracking
Samsung Health included a variety of trackers, for everything from activity and vital signs, to sleep quality, to caloric intake. Trackers were color-coded based on their related health goal.
Material Design, Charts, and Graphs
This was the first Material Design app from Samsung. We used many Material component patterns, and designed a library of charts and graphs that would fit within the Material style.
