Designed in 2022-2025

Wearable Device
Accessory

Personal Study Project inside 
Suunto in-house Design Team

Suunto, as a brand primarily known for its sports watches, has had a strategic growth target: to attract more young people, women, and Asian customers. 

In reality, urban populations in Asia are among the few with sufficient purchasing power to afford a €500 sports watch. However, these mega urban cities are often surrounded by concrete rather than nature, unlike Europe, where the outdoors is more accessible. This concept was created specifically to appeal to these three demographics, using city running as the entry point.(Suunto is, after all, a performance sports brand.)

I’ve noticed that many brands with a similar positioning adopt comparable strategies. They tend to offer highly specialized products, like Arc’teryx's technical jackets, Salomon's trail running shoes, or New Balance's marathon shoes, but often also release urban versions of these products. These urban versions are cleaner, more stylish, and more “Sanitized”. So the question became: how can we take the traditionally rugged, outdoorsy Suunto watch and make it feel more sanitized and appealing to urban youth, women, and Asian customers?

I began the concept researches around three basic topics: user, context, and benefit. I conducted a detailed analysis of the target users, including who they are, their professions, income levels, how they spend their time, and so on. For the context, I examined locations, weather conditions, environments, surroundings, and the preferences this demographic has when it comes to choosing settings and occasions to wear such products. Then, I defined the benefits: what benefits can this product bring in those scenarios? These might include fashion-related needs, like colors, styles, and strap choices; experiential needs, such as lightness, breathability; and functional needs, like listening to music or making payments.

Speaking of music, I found it interesting that many of my Finnish colleagues take running very seriously: they rarely listen to music when running. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, that perhaps Finns are naturally more introverted, or maybe they’re all only into heavy metal? :P

Because of the cultural differences and the unique decorative properties of watches, I added another research focus: 

what do young men and women in Asian cities typically wear across different seasons? 

From that, I aimed to derive insights on how a more
“Sanitized”watch might better match their clothing preferences.

Of course, Suunto’s brand DNA, rooted in Nordic and Scandinavian design, in fact limits how far we can stray from a minimalist, discreet, and refined aesthetic. 

So we intentionally avoided turnning into high-street fashion industry (like the classic G-Shock or Garmin Instinct series), and instead, to focuse on two style directions: “Outdoor Activity Style” and “Urban Fashion Sports Style.”

When defining the design direction, I wanted to clearly outline what I meant by a “Sanitized” product from the mood board stage. Through visual research focused on keywords like Asian, young, and female, I arrived at three shared qualities that I believe suit Suunto’s brand image and speak to the target users:

The product, at its core, is still a plastic sports watch since anything too expensive would exceed the budget of our target group. Through an expanded mood board exploration, I also drew inspiration from more abstract ideas: Hard Form, Soft Form, Colour, Decoration, Detail, and Material Combinations.

In terms of concept positioning, I wanted this design to sit somewhere between a playable, fashionable style and a serious, sporty style.

I started by creating several visual collages, trying to quickly capture the right feeling and direction.

Through this process, I discovered that using translucent, multi-layered materials gives the product an overall sense of refinement with intricate details. Yet, due to the natural property of translucent materials, these details aren’t always clearly visible—which helps form a harmonious and unified look, evoking a clean, “Sanitized” aesthetic. From there, I began modeling and generated the first batch of drafts. With several rounds of iteration, I got second and third drafts.

I also conducted some early CMF studies to explore how this layered, detail-rich yet unified concept of sanitization could take on different personalities through surface treatment or colours.

At this stage, I presented the concept internally. I made further refinements to the design and incorporated more artistic influences, such as straps inspired by the color palette of Mark Rothko’s paintings.

As the project progressed, I explored additional alternatives. 

However, the overall direction had already become quite clear by this point.

After working on the project for a while, I became deeply immersed. I went back to research more references that strike a balance between outdoor ruggedness and urban fashion. 

I extracted patterns, color combinations, and graphic elements from these references and applied them to my earlier drafts. It resulted in some quite interesting outcomes.

Around this time, the concept caught the attention of the company’s CEO. He encouraged me to further develop the idea and involved members of the hardware engineering team to evaluate the feasibility. 

One key point was the use of translucent plastics: for durability, enough glass fiber would need to be added, but this would inevitably introduce a yellowish tint to the material. 

The team also suggested that the concept would be stronger if it could support a whole product family, allowing for depth within the series and smoother integration into Suunto’s existing portfolio. If successful, the concept could naturally evolve into the next product line.

I started developing variations on the same base form, minimizing the impact of the translucent layering in some models and enhancing the distinct personality of each design through changes to both the watch and the strap.

Eventually, I arrived at three SKUs for this concept family. Each one targets slightly different user groups and carries subtle design differences. 

I was genuinely satisfied with the outcome, and so was the CEO, who gave very positive feedback. He would like to bring it to the R&D plan and next year roadmap.

Because of CEO’s support, the concept moved forward to the appearance model phase after some technical evaluations by engineers. 

That marked the END of the development stage for the concept.

I had high hopes for this project: it felt like a well-rounded and exciting piece of work. 

However, due to limited development resources and internal political conflicts between executives in Finland and China, the project was ultimately shelved. 

In the end, the executives who supported and opposed this concept ended up in a confrontation in front of the CEO. The project was neither the root cause nor the direct trigger of the power struggle, but it became collateral damage in the process.

Thank you for reading all the way through. 
I wish you all the best in your own work ahead.

2025 June in Helsinki summer
Mu