It all started at Terrasse Nelligan, a rooftop terrace in Montreal, sometime in 2011. Sonny said to Mladen: “I want to do something cool in the wearable-mobile industry. John Sculley’s in, are you?”. What followed was one of the coolest and most demanding projects we’ve worked on. After creating the product concept, we worked with Sonny through fundraising, building of the team, defining of the brand and setting up the supply chain. Market was still very young and focused on feature rich, early adopter devices, but we knew there were several players working on a similar product, and we knew the bar needed to be set high. We created the iconic SHINE and a brand built to last. In 2015, Misfit was acquired by the Fossil Group.
Wear Anywhere
Getting people to continue to wear a device that measures activity requires trickery. We all have different tastes, and wearables to be effective, should either be part of our fashion, or invisible. Our goal was to create a device that you'd want to wear, whether it did something or not. You can wear SHINE anywhere. And we mean anywhere on your body, as well as to any occasion. With several accessories and tiny size, you can clip it, strap it or clasp it just about anywhere on your body. The design is so simple, yet refined, that you can wear it to run, or to a black tie event.
Simple UI
Our lives are complex enough – we don't need another gadget making more work for us. SHINE has an ultra simple display that appears only when needed: 12 dots, representing a loop of your daily goal. Complete the loop, you've reached your goal. Haven't? Go for a walk until you have. If you choose to wear it on your wrist, it doubles as a watch, accurate to 5 minute intervals.
Magical Sync
SHINE syncs by interacting with the app screen. When you want to sync it, you open the app and place SHINE on the phone to sync. It's that simple.
Each SHINE is machined out of two solid blocks of aluminum. The main body is created to perform at least 12 different functions and reduce part count. This design allows us to create super thin sections, while maintaining incredible strength, packing a lot of power into a tiny, handsome body.
Each SHINE contains 1,656 microscopic holes that form 12 lights. Holes were designed with a specific profile to let most light through, then holes are microscopically sealed to be waterproof up to 100m. Lights are only visible when on.
Misfit (a Misfit, personification)
We saw Misfit, the name, as a representation of the company culture: a personification of the "crazy ones", which gives tribute to Steve Jobs' early Apple campaign. So we wanted to treat the brand as such. "What would a Misfit do? Is this a Misfit thing to do?" We wanted the brand to bear not just a logo, but a mark of a Misfit.
Wearable
As we thought about the Misfits that inspired us, we noticed an odd pattern: many of them appeared in photos either wearing a bow tie, or a cape with the superhero symbol. A bow tie is a bit quirky, yet lovable wearable, while cape - well, nothing further needs to be said. We thought: what if our mark could be a worn symbol? A bowtie or a superhero mark. Or both?