Behind the Design: How Gentler Streak approaches fitness with “humanity“

Gentler Streak is simply a antithetic benignant of fittingness tracker. In fact, to perceive cofounder and CEO Katarina Lotrič archer it, it’s not truly a fittingness tracker astatine all.

“We deliberation of it much arsenic a manner app,” says Lotrič, from the team’s location bureau successful Kranj, Slovenia. “We privation it to consciousness similar a compass, a reminder to get moving, nary substance what that means for you,” she says.

ADA FACT SHEET

Gentler Streak

• Winner: Social Impact
• Team: Gentler Stories d.o.o., Slovenia
• Available on: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch
• Team size: 8
• Previous accolades: Apple Watch App of the Year (2022), Apple Design Award finalist (Visuals and graphics, 2023)

Download Gentler Streak from the App Store

Learn much astir Gentler Streak

Meet the 2024 Apple Design Award winners

That past portion is key. True to its name, the Apple Design Award-winning Gentler Streak takes a friendlier attack to fitness. Instead of focusing connected show — connected the bigger, faster, and stronger — Gentler Streak meets radical wherever they are, presenting workout suggestions, statistics, and encouragement for each accomplishment levels.

“A batch of mainstream fittingness apps tin look to beryllium astir pushing each the time,” Lotrič says. “But for a batch of people, that isn’t the reality. Everyone has antithetic demands and capabilities connected antithetic days. We thought, ‘Can we make a instrumentality to assistance anyone cognize wherever they’re astatine connected immoderate fixed day, and usher them to a sustainably progressive lifestyle?’”

If a 15-minute locomotion is what your assemblage tin bash astatine that moment, that’s great.

To scope those goals, Lotrič and her Gentler Stories cofounders — UI/UX decorator Andrej Mihelič, elder developer Luka Orešnik, and CTO and iOS developer Jasna Krmelj — created an app powered by an optimistic and encouraging vibe that considers carnal fittingness and intelligence well-being equally.

Fitness and workout information (collected from HealthKit) is presented successful a colorful, approachable design. The app’s halfway functions are disposable for free; a subscription unlocks premium features. And an abstract mascot named Yorhart (sound it out) adds to the airy touch. “Yorhart helps you found a narration with the app and with yourself, due to the fact that it’s what your bosom would beryllium telling you,” Lotrič says.

It’s working: In summation to the 2024 Apple Design Award for Social Impact, Gentler Streak was named 2022 Apple Watch App of the Year. What’s more, it has an award-winning ancestor: Lotrič and Orešnik won an Apple Design Award successful 2017 for Lake: Coloring Book for Adults.

The trio utilized the occurrence of Lake to larn much astir navigating the industry. But thing other was happening during that time: The team, each athletes, began revisiting their ain relationships with fitness. Lotrič suffered an wounded that kept her from moving for months and affected her intelligence health; she writes astir her experiences successful Gentler Streak’s editorial section. Mihelič had a antithetic issue. “My occupation wasn’t that I lacked motivation,” helium says. “It was that I worked retired excessively much. I needed thing that fto maine cognize erstwhile it was enough.”

Statistics are conscionable numbers. Without knowing however to construe them, they are meaningless.

As a mode to reset, Mihelič enactment unneurotic an interior app, a elemental inferior that encouraged him to determination but besides allowed clip for recuperation. “It wasn’t precise gentle,” helium laughs. “But the halfway thought was much oregon little the same. It guided but it didn’t push. And it wasn’t based connected numbers; it was much explanatory.”

Over time, the radical began utilizing Mihelič’s app. “We saw close distant that it was sticky,” says Lotrič. “I came backmost to it daily, and it was conscionable this basal prototype. After a while, we realized, ‘Well, this works and is built, to an extent. Why don’t we spot if there’s thing here?’”

That’s erstwhile Lotrič, Orešnik, and Krmelj divided from Lake to make Gentler Stories with Mihelič. "I wanted successful due to the fact that I loved the thought down the full company,” Krmelj says. “It wasn’t conscionable astir the app. I truly similar the app. But I truly believed successful this thought astir intelligence well-being.”

Early users believed it too: The squad recovered that archetypal TestFlight assemblage members returned astatine a stronger complaint than expected. “Our unfastened and instrumentality rates were precocious capable that we kept thinking, “Are these numbers adjacent real?’” laughs Lotrič. The squad recovered that those aboriginal users responded powerfully to the “gentler” side, the approachable repositioning of statistics.

“We weren’t chiefly addressing the assemblage that astir fittingness apps seemed to target,” says Lotrič. “We focused connected everyone else, the radical who possibly didn’t consciousness similar they belonged successful a gym. Statistics are conscionable numbers. Without knowing however to construe them, they are meaningless. We wanted to alteration that and absorption connected the humanity.” By autumn of 2021, Gentler Streak was acceptable for premier time.

Today’s mentation of the app follows the aforesaid strategy of Mihelič’s archetypal prototype. Built mostly successful UIKit, its wellness information is smartly organized, the plan is affable and consistent, and features similar its Monthly Summary presumption — which shows however you’re doing successful narration to your past — absorption little connected examination and much connected progress, immoderate that whitethorn mean. “If a 15-minute locomotion is what your assemblage tin bash astatine that moment, that’s great,” Lotrič says. “That however we marque radical consciousness represented.”

The app’s societal interaction continues to grow. In the outpouring of 2024, Gentler Streak added enactment for Japanese, Korean, and accepted and simplified Chinese languages; erstwhile updates added enactment for French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

And those important features — fittingness tracking, workout suggestions, metrics, and enactment recaps — volition stay disposable to everyone. “That goes with the Gentler Stories philosophy,” says Lotrič. “We’re bootstrapped, but astatine the aforesaid clip we cognize that not everyone is successful a presumption to enactment us. We inactive privation to beryllium a instrumentality that helps radical enactment steadfast not conscionable for the archetypal 2 weeks of the twelvemonth oregon the summer, but each twelvemonth long.”

Meet the 2024 Apple Design Award winners

Behind the Design is simply a bid that explores plan practices and philosophies from finalists and winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we spell down the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to observe however they brought their singular creations to life.