Allure – Runner's Instrument

Your whole day on one dial, and one line that answers the only question worth asking: are you on pace? THE PACE BAR The bar is your step goal. The white mark is where you should be by now to finish the day on target. Under it, the gap in steps: in colour when you are ahead, in amber when you are behind, and ON PACE when it is close enough that the difference does not matter. The pace is spread over your waking hours, not over the twenty four. Counting the night would put everyone behind at breakfast. Both hours are yours to set. The goal itself is the one your watch already knows, the one you set in the app. You are not asked to enter it twice. A TWENTY FOUR HOUR RING Ninety six strokes, one to a quarter hour, and an arc that runs from midnight to now. A twenty four hour ring tells you where you stand in the day, which no twelve hour dial can do: at ten in the morning you see at a glance that two thirds of the day is still ahead. DENSE, BUT RULED Six registers, separated by rules. Aligned columns. Labels in small capitals. A crowded dial becomes unreadable the moment you no longer know where to look, and the grid is what stops that happening. TEN READINGS, FIVE PLACES Distance, steps, heart rate, calories, floors climbed, intensity minutes, battery in days or in percent, the date, or nothing at all. Put any of them in the headline, beside it, or in any of the three cells. When your watch has nothing to give, a reading shows a dot rather than a zero: a zero reads like a measurement, and a field stuck at zero looks like a fault in the face when it is only the watch being honest. DRAWN FOR THE SMALL SCREEN Every line of type was measured against the chord of the dial at its own height, on all four resolutions, and the layout was chosen from that measurement rather than by eye. A long figure steps down a size rather than running off the edge. A long date drops its month rather than being cut. NO PERMISSIONS None. The face asks nothing of your watch and nothing of your phone. FOUR COLOURS Cyan, amber, green or red. The ring, the hour and the pace bar take the accent; everything else stays white and grey, which is what keeps a dense dial readable. TELL ME WHAT YOU WOULD CHANGE I read every review and I reply. If something bothers you, a colour, a proportion, an option you wish existed, say so and I will look at it.