Under Armour · Case study
One Identity, Three Apps.
- Cross-platform Product Design
- iOS · Android
- Design Systems
- Identity & Account UX
- Pattern Library Authoring
- Stakeholder Alignment
- Role
- Sr. UX/UI Designer
- Timeline
- Dec 2018 to Apr 2019
- Platform
- iOS · Android
- Surface
- MapMyRun · MyFitnessPal · UA Shop
Overview
One customer, three separate profiles.
Three apps. Three logins. Three profile experiences. MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, and UA Shop each owned their own account model. A customer of all three appeared as three separate people, and Under Armour had no way to act on that relationship.
The goal was a Unified Profile: one identity, one set of preferences, one design language across iOS and Android. Without that layer, cross-app personalization and commerce had nothing reliable to build on. The work moved from audit and pattern alignment through unified profile design, settings IA, and a shared pattern library each brand could still express in its own voice.
I audited the three existing surfaces, authored the pattern library, and aligned three product teams on a shared component direction.
Strategy
Three pillars to connect one profile.
- 01
Shared identity model
One login, one data contract across three frontend teams sharing a single account state. Design had to define what that contract meant for every profile surface before engineering could build to it.
- 02
Profile pattern library
Reusable components for header, settings, privacy, and preferences, defined once and consumed by every surface. The library was the mechanism that let three teams ship from a single source of truth.
- 03
Platform-correct visuals
A shared visual language that still respected iOS and Android conventions where they mattered. Platform behavior stayed native; structure stayed shared.
Research
Patterns Before Screens.
I started with a baseline audit of MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, and UA Shop, every profile header and settings surface side by side. A pattern inventory across comparable fitness and commerce apps on iOS and Android followed, covering reachability, header treatment, and settings density against real device contexts.
The pattern grid and settings audit chart became the alignment artifacts. They mapped where the three apps overlapped, where they contradicted each other, and which external patterns were worth adopting. Product and engineering aligned on the same reference instead of preference. That evidence set the direction for the unified profile work in Design.
Design
Profile structure and settings IA
One profile header, three brand voices
The unified profile header shared type, density, and structure across all three apps. Accent color and imagery stayed brand-local. MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, and UA Shop each retained their visual identity within a common scaffold.
That system continuity gave users orientation the first time they opened profile or settings in another Under Armour app, without asking each brand to give up its own visual expression.
Settings regrouped around user intent
Building on the settings audit in Research, I grouped overlapping and contradictory controls across all three apps. Labels and placements had followed engineering boundaries more often than user intent.
I consolidated them into four categories: account, preferences, privacy, and connections. The grouping principle was user intent, not feature ownership. Previous groupings had followed team org charts; the new structure followed what a user was actually trying to do.
Commerce in the profile and header density models
Purchase history inside the profile
A unified profile is also a commerce surface. The UA Shop connection placed purchase history inside the same identity layer as fitness data, making both visible in a single profile context.
Placement was evaluated for how much it would interrupt the identity context. A modal or interstitial approach was considered and cut. Inline placement within the established profile structure kept the connection meaningful.
Header density across profile states
These header explorations model density for different profile states, not one fixed layout for every account. MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, and UA Shop weighted profile data differently depending on the app and on how mature a user was in that product.
A single shared header component still had to flex across those variants without splitting into three unrelated systems. Reachability and accessibility stayed in scope so lighter and denser treatments remained usable on large-screen iOS and Android.
Each iteration calibrated how much identity, activity, and action density belonged in the header for a given profile mode, while keeping structure recognizable when someone moved between Under Armour apps.
Outcome
Three apps, three platforms, one library.
3 → 1
separate app profiles consolidated into one identity
3
platforms united on iOS, Android and mobile web
200M+
users worldwide connected by a unified profile experience
Reflection
Why the pattern library mattered.
Users moving between MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, and UA Shop gained coherence: one login, one set of preferences, and profile and settings that behaved the same in each app. Shared patterns and structure gave them orientation the first time they opened another Under Armour app, without relearning where identity lived.
The pattern library is where that work paid off. Three product teams shipped from the same components and one identity spec on web, iOS, and Android. Connected patterns and system continuity made a unified profile viable across three brands without three diverging component trees.