Project

Brisk

Product design

Mobile app

Launch campaign

2025

Client

Brisk, a running app for people with jobs, London

58%

of new runners still on a plan in week eight, against 21% on the old plans

9.3%

of App Store page visitors who installed in April 2025, up from 4.1% for the previous app

Live site

Visit live site

The brief

Brisk was founded in Hackney in 2021 and writes training plans for runners with jobs, from a first 10k to a marathon. The plans were good, but they were built around days: miss Tuesday and the rest of the week fell apart, and Brisk’s own numbers showed most runners had given up by March. Brisk asked for an iOS app designed around that problem and the campaign to launch it, made by one team. The launch was booked for the second week of January 2025.

The idea

The week is the unit. Brisk’s home screen shows one number, the kilometres left this week, and the days still free to run them; miss a run and the plan spreads itself across those days instead of marking a failure. We asked to move the launch to the end of March, when runners usually quit, and spent the ten weeks in between with 2,400 testers. One of them missed two days, wrote to support that she was training sideways now, and gave the campaign its line.

The week

The home screen is one large number, the kilometres left this week, with the days still free beneath it, so on a Wednesday a runner can see that 17 km over three days is still within reach.

Brisk’s week, 17 km left, on a phone beside running shoes

Brisk’s week as seven lanes on a tablet on a hallway bench

Brisk’s week on a tablet beside running shoes

Rebuilding the plan

Skip a run and Brisk offers two or three ways to rebuild the week, each showing which days move and by how much. Testers missed 1.7 runs each in their first week, so this was the screen we tested most.

Brisk’s rebuild screen, The week bends, on a phone on a stone floor

Today’s run

On the day, one screen holds the run: distance, pace and the reason for it in plain words from Brisk’s coaches. It reads on the lock screen, in the dark, with gloves on.

Brisk’s 5 km easy run on a phone standing beside running shoes

Brisk’s 5 km easy run on a phone leaning on a bench leg

Twelve weeks to race day

The plan is counted in weeks, each one a bar of kilometres, and the last week before the race is short on purpose.

Brisk’s plan, five weeks to go, on a phone by a bowl of keys

The launch

The line came from a tester and opens both the app and the site: Train sideways. The 30-second film followed three testers on five dark mornings before work.

Brisk’s launch screen on a phone on a wool scarf

The Brisk site’s week section on a laptop on a hallway bench

The Brisk download page on a laptop on a console table

What changed

Brisk launched on 27 March 2025, when the same media slots cost about 30% less than in January. The larger change was in who stayed: runners who missed days rebuilt their week instead of deleting the app, and Brisk’s coaches now write plans in weeks rather than days.

Credits

Okapi: Helena Matos (lead designer), Duarte Neves (campaign), Nuno Ferraz (product design), Marta Lobo (campaign line and app copy), Ricardo Sousa (iOS components)
Brisk: Alex Morgan (marketing director), Priya Shah (head of coaching)
With: film directed by Sam Okafor in Hackney and Victoria Park, with a crew of three

Client

Brisk, a running app for people with jobs, London