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VeluRun
Founder & Product Designer Case 02 of 02

VeluRun

A GPS fitness product taken from idea to shipped app — design system, information architecture and technical direction.

Client
VeluRun — self-initiated
Role
Founder & Product Designer
Team
Solo founder (1)
Duration
2025 – present
Platforms
Android (Google Play, 19 countries) · iOS on roadmap
Tools
React Native (Expo SDK 56) · TypeScript · Supabase · Mapbox

Overview

VeluRun is a GPS running and cycling app built for the LATAM market: two sports in one app, guided interval training, and a GPS pipeline that keeps recording with the screen off. Designed and shipped end to end, from the first sketch to a live listing on Google Play.

Role & scope

Founder, sole developer and product designer. Direction and every final call were mine. Two AI collaborators worked under that direction in fixed roles: Claude drafted diagnostics, prompts and design decisions; Opus — running as Claude Code in the terminal — executed the code, builds and git. Nothing shipped without my review. A three-role system, not a chat — and it shipped a real product to Google Play.

DIRECTION PROMPTS REVIEW DIRECTS & APPROVES ALEX Founder · every final call CLAUDE Diagnostics, prompts, design decisions OPUS Claude Code in the terminal: code, builds, git
Three fixed roles, one loop — every cycle returns to Alex before the next step.

Design system

A token-based system built for glanceable data in motion — outdoors, in sunlight, at a glance.

Six words anchor every visual decision: energetic, technical, minimal, natural, precise, athletic. The aesthetic sits close to Nike Run Club, Whoop and Nothing Phone — sport-grade data, clinical restraint, one accent with character.

Principle

If it can't be read in a glance, it doesn't exist.

The app is used in motion, often in direct sunlight. Every live metric has to survive a half-second look. Tracking screens abandon the light UI entirely for a near-black dedicated palette, so white numbers and the lime accent cut through glare instead of washing out on a bright card. The live chronometer runs in Sora ExtraBold at 72px — large enough to read at arm’s length mid-stride. The dark palette on Record and active Train is not a "dark mode" preference — it is a dedicated context for the one moment an athlete cannot afford to squint.

Color

#D4FF37 is the only brand accent in the app — never a second accent competing for attention. Hierarchy comes from weight, size and neutrals instead; lime is reserved for the one value or action that matters most on each screen.

Light
  • primary #D4FF37
  • secondary #0A1F2C
  • bg #F8F9FA
  • surface #FFFFFF
  • error #BA1A1A
Dark · Record & active Train
  • bg #040f0f
  • surface #0d1e1e
  • border #1a3535
  • primary #D4FF37

The mark

The mark is not a generic bolt. Read one way it is a figure running, seen from the side; read the other, the same silhouette is a cyclist folded over the bars. One angular stroke covering both sports the app was built for — drawn once, not twice.

  1. VeluRun mark — Primary variant Primary Lime ground, navy mark. The default tile and the composition the Android launcher icon is built on.
  2. VeluRun mark — Dark variant Dark The inversion — navy ground, lime mark — for dark surfaces.
  3. VeluRun mark — Mono variant Mono Navy mark on a neutral tile with a hairline edge, for contexts that cannot carry the lime.

Typography

Type is split by job rather than by taste.

  • 05:14 /km

    Sora 700 · 800 Headlines & numbers

    ExtraBold at 72px on the live chronometer.

  • Ready for your next route.

    Hanken Grotesk 400 · 600 · 700 Body & UI

  • C O R R E O E L E C T R Ó N I C O

    Space Mono 400 Form labels

    Confined to Login and Register.

Spacing & shape

Border
1.5px across the whole app
Radius / light
22 on light-surface cards
Radius / dark
16–20 on dark cards
Radius / pills
999 — buttons, tags, toggles

Motion

Motion is physics, not duration. Everything animates on one of three shared springs (react-native-reanimated) — never a fixed easing curve — so gestures stay interruptible and composable, from a single source file.

SPRING_SNAPPY
damping 15 · stiffness 220 · mass 0.8Small toggles, icons, button scale.
SPRING_DEFAULT
damping 18 · stiffness 180 · mass 1Cards, panels, most UI transitions.
SPRING_GENTLE
damping 22 · stiffness 150 · mass 1Full-screen and tab transitions.

Components

A compact set of shared primitives keeps interaction and chrome consistent across every screen.

  • PressableScale
  • RemoteImage
  • ConfirmModal
  • InfoModal
  • PhotoPickerModal
  • ModeToast
  • CommentsSheet
  • Collapsible
  • VeloRunWatermark

Process

Every UI decision started as a mockup before a line of code. Every technical change shipped with a written diagnostic — nine so far — so decisions stayed traceable instead of tribal knowledge. Builds were verified on physical hardware before every release.

Underneath all of it, one principle: glanceable minimalism. Every screen is meant to be read and let go of, never stopped over and interpreted.

  1. Every activity, one scannable card — VeluRun app screen
    community feed

    Every activity, one scannable card

    Function
    Distance, time, elevation and pace lead each card, route photo below, velu reactions and comments last.
    Why
    The numbers carry the card; the social layer supports it, it never has to compete with it.
  2. Every number in one glance — VeluRun app screen
    live tracking

    Every number in one glance

    Function
    Pace, distance, time, calories, elevation gain and loss, and a run/bike switch — all on one screen while recording.
    Why
    Nothing to tap or scroll for mid-run — the numbers that matter are already there.
  3. Pace, broken down without digging — VeluRun app screen
    after the run

    Pace, broken down without digging

    Function
    Last activity, pace per kilometre from KM1 to KM6, best split highlighted.
    Why
    The question people actually ask after a run — how did each km go — answered on the first screen, no separate analytics view.
  4. Presets over a blank slate — VeluRun app screen
    workout setup

    Presets over a blank slate

    Function
    Sprint, intervals, fartlek, tabata — grouped by speed, threshold, endurance, HIIT. Custom distance and rest are one tap further, not the default.
    Why
    Fewer decisions to start a session; customization stays available, just not first.

Community

Running and cycling stop being solo the moment someone sees what you did. Every profile connects to others, every activity shows up for your connections to react to with a velu — VeluRun's own reaction, not a generic like — and comment on. Community infrastructure for creating and joining groups inside the app is already wired end to end; it's built and ready, just not turned on for this first release.

  1. The feed is the social layer — VeluRun app screen
    the feed

    The feed is the social layer

    Function
    One activity, top to bottom: the mapped route, distance, time, pace and elevation, the photo from the run and the fastest kilometre splits.
    Why
    Seeing someone else’s real route and splits is the cheapest motivation there is — the feed puts it one tap from your own start button.

Key challenges

  1. A security finding that became a full audit

    Problem
    A Supabase view was readable without a session.
    Decision
    Escalated to a systematic RLS and grants audit across the whole schema instead of patching the one table.
    Outcome
    Two critical and one high-severity finding closed, 10 tables hardened, and the photo storage bucket moved from public to private with 1-hour signed URLs.

  2. GPS that doesn't drop out

    Problem
    Background tracking with the screen off needed to survive aggressive OS battery optimization and still produce a smooth live pace.
    Decision
    Batched, ordered location processing with a seed-fix staleness filter, anti-teleport checks, and short-window EMA smoothing on live pace.
    Outcome
    Verified on a clean Play Store install, tracking surviving screen-off periods.

  3. Auth with the smallest footprint

    Problem
    SMS OTP is expensive and fragile across LATAM carriers.
    Decision
    Email-only six-digit OTP through Supabase Auth — no phone numbers, no custom auth backend.
    Outcome
    One auth path to test and support, shipped in four languages.

Results

19Countries on Google Play
4Languages
10Database tables audited (RLS)
5Security migrations shipped

Live and stable — usage metrics are still early; this section grows as real numbers come in.

What's next

Real-world GPS validation outdoors, AdMob activation, and a connected sportswear line under the same brand. The biggest lesson: shipping solo doesn't mean building alone — it means being explicit enough about every decision that the record does the remembering for you.

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