Running Stories
Running Stories is an audio-tainment platform that turns your running routes into tailored immersive experiences. Augmented audio enhances your surroundings by sourcing live data from open APIs to create a story designed to enter-train you. The app uses your live location data, weather, your running speed and more to make you the main character in the story. It is currently in beta stage, but you can experience our launch story in Singapore.
Awards and accolades
AD STARS 2021 – Brand Experience & Activation (Gold), Outdoor (Gold), Media (Silver), Interactive (Bronze), Mobile (Bronze)
ANDY Awards 2021 – Idea
Caples Awards 2021 – Digital B to C (Gold), Mobile (Gold), Innovation (Silver), Copy (Silver)
One Show 2021 – Intra-preneurship (Gold), Agency-Initiated & Originated Projects (Bronze), Innovation in Mobile (Bronze)
Red Dot Design Award 2022 – Best of the Best (Service App)
Webby Awards 2021 – Best Use of Data Driven Media
- BBH Singapore
- Product Owner, UI/UX Design, Production
- 2018 - 2021
Problem Statement
Let’s face it, running is boring, especially to the everyday person. And when people do go for runs, they listen to music or podcasts to entertain them while they are running. However, none of these sources of entertainment relate to them directly as they’re running if they’re not listening to training regimes.
Ideation
How might we make running into a bingeable experience? How do you get couch potatoes and seasoned sprinters alike lining up for a running app? We thought what if Netflix, Spotify, and your favourite running app came together and made a baby and put the listener into the running shoes of main characters of stories that react specifically to your running route. By using GPS markers that would usually recognise things such as landmarks, venues, shops and streets – we pair that tech up with existing data points such as time of day and weather and mix it with the magic filter of storytelling.
Considerations
Design wise, we made use of visual language of streaming apps that users would recognise to establish that this is of course a running app, but with a huge emphasis on entertainment and storytelling. As the beta meant for public launch was only going to include 3 or less stories, we decided that instead of grouping them up like Spotify or Netflix, we wanted to just feature them front and center as cards to display the different types of genres that’s possible with Running Stories.
Iteration Process
We started with a proof of concept to test the feasibility where we made use of a story that we’ve written against a route near us and recorded it roughly using the Voice Memo app in our phones. The proof of concept was developed by our development partners in Vietnam.
We tested the app within the internal team and we dived straight into making an MVP shortly after we got the green light from the testing phase. Some examples of the major features we are testing in the app as shown below. Once we’ve gotten feedback from our curated group of runners from within the agency, we made another iteration that’s public facing which has become the current beta that’s available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
A debugging panel was set up to ensure that all audio clips were triggered and played at the correct GPS plot point. This is to ensure that the pacing of the story was correct for the route and we will make changes accordingly based on the different landmarks that we want to include in the story.
It was important for us get feedback from outside of the main team so we included a rating feature for each episode and also a button for them to send detailed feedback to us via email. These feedback received range from level of entertainment to UAT troubleshooting.
We first included some simple instructions on first onboarding but after testing, we found that the instructions felt redundant because the mechanics of the app was actually simple and also familiar to them as it is generally similar to the likes of Spotify or Netflix.
Iterated Public Facing Beta
Other than removing the onboarding 3-step instruction, the UX and information architecture stayed largely the same. The onboarding instruction has been replaced by a 1-pager and we also included an additional FAQ page which included our website and email address for easy feedback and partnership discussions.
