In the very competitive Smart Watch market, Samsung needs to differentiate itself from its competitors. Our brief consisted in the development of solutions that resonate with pop cultural trends while staying close to Samsung’s Status Quo questioning brand spirit. Samsung as a driver of innovation is enabling people with Galaxy Time to broaden their horizons and to experience a perspective change on our whole human existence on earth.

Like that Samsung contributes to a wholesome understanding of Earth being part of a larger

system and helps to see Earth’s challenges in a new light. Moreover Galaxy Time serves ESA scientists as a handy tool for their daily work.

The problems of humanity seem overwhelming right now. In this situation the Galaxy Time watch face broadens our horizon since our Earth is part of a larger system: our solar system and our galaxy. The earthly time that we experience as days, hours, and seconds does not apply to our neighboring planets. Scientifically researched data which was provided by ESA served as a foundation for simulating the movement of the planets in our Solar System inside our watch face. With Galaxy Time we made it possible to display the local times of all 8 planets in our Solar System as well of Earth’s Moon.

While most Smart Watch communication is about fitness features, we decided to put the Samsung Galaxy Watch in a rather suprising context: Time and Space. Our aim was to become part of the rising popularity of Space travel and Space tourism which will become with time a mass phenomenon.

We created a unique watch face for each of the 8 planets, based on numerous highly precise and scientifically researched ESA datasets which were derived from Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. So we used scientific data in a away which made it possible to bring planetary times to the wrist of Smart Watch owners.

Our target audiences: existing Samsung users, tech-savy Millennials and Gen Z – and new fans for the brand.

As we developed a time format that did not exist before our goal was to find a design language which would be as unique like our conceptual approach. Our solution was a minimalist watch face design which had to be maximally flexible as the planetary times vary greatly. Another important aspect was to avoid overused depictions of space and to find a characteristic and unique visual approach. During the design process we had to keep in mind the watch medium and its unique challenges in order to guarantee a flawless user experience.

The typography had to be fully readable on the smallest Galaxy Watch displays which is why we relied on a typeface used in aviation interface design.

In the watch face our software simulates the movement of the Solar System and uses numerous highly precise datasets provided by the European Space Agency (ESA).

We launched Galaxy Time on March 31st right for the switch to summer time in the Google Play Store where it can be downloaded for free. Various formats for Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Digital campaign with microsite and online ads. Overall we reached a positive sentiment of 100% for Galaxy Time and 48M Estimated Earned Impressions.

With over 50K Watch face downloads in the Google Play Store in under four weeks we proved that Galaxy Time hit a nerve of our target group. User of Galaxy Time can experience the different time formats which are a result of the implementation of scientific data in our watch face.

The very good app rating of 4,4 emphasizes the positive impact the Galaxy Time watch face had. Our innovative watch face even let users of the Apple Watch feel sorry that they were not able to install it on their device. Galaxy Time received great positive feedback from various publications all over the world and inspired also numerous users to post reaction videos, YouTube reviews and positive comments. Overall we reached a positive sentiment of 100% for Galaxy Time and 48M Estimated Earned Impressions.