How FORM Gets Ready for Open Water Season
With open-water races, triathlons, and swim challenges starting to take place, we’ve been busy improving, tweaking, and adding new features to our open-water experience. Last year, we launched our innovative SwimStraight™ feature, which we have loved receiving your feedback on and hearing how it’s helped our community of swimmers swim faster in open water!
In this blog, we wanted to share a little bit behind the curtain on how we prepare for each open water season, and just what goes into testing and delivering the great features we have available to you on your goggles, specifically for open water swimming.
Starting Each Winter
Toward the end of each year, we begin laying the groundwork for the next open water season, which typically kicks off for us in May. In our October product roadmap meeting, we put a spotlight on open water—reviewing what worked, identifying pain points, and deciding how to further stabilize existing features or evolve them further.
From there, we ideate and prioritize potential new features, locking in our plan before winter hits. Testing begins in simulated environments, using pools to refine functionality and eliminate variables. Then, starting in January, we begin real-world open water testing—first in warm-weather locations, then transitioning to chillier local lakes and oceans as spring approaches. It’s not always comfortable (or warm), but this early, consistent testing cycle ensures every feature we release is ready to perform when swimmers hit the open water.
FORM's Lead Product Manager, Dave, testing open water features at Sasamat Lake in April.
First Wave
To further assist testing, we’re fortunate to have a community of passionate First Wave swimmers—a couple of hundred dedicated athletes from around the world who help us put our features to the test and provide their valuable feedback.
Whether they’re swimming in local pools or open water spots across varying climates and conditions, they give us access to a wide cross-section of environments that we simply couldn’t reach on our own.
First Wavers receive early access to test features and provide critical feedback that helps us refine, improve, and expand what we offer. While our internal team loves swimming, we always welcome as many people as possible to swim and test from all over the globe to receive feedback. That’s why we rely on this engaged community to help us ramp up testing and bring innovations to life faster and with more real-world validation.
Testing in the Pacific With Elliot Block
Elliot has been swimming for over 20 years, using it as training for triathlons and long-distance events, including the UltraMan World Championships. Now 64 and living in Maui, he swims year-round in the ocean with a regular masters group at North Kaanapali Beach, where water conditions range from calm to wildly unpredictable with chop, currents, and the occasional whale song underwater.
A long-time First Wave tester, Elliot plays a key role in helping FORM prepare for open water season by providing feedback from a truly dynamic swim environment. He uses his FORM goggles both in the pool and the ocean—relying on real-time pace, distance, and SwimStraight direction tracking to stay consistent, push effort, and swim straighter, even in challenging conditions. Whether training solo or racing 10k swims in rough surf, Elliot’s insights help ensure FORM’s open water features perform reliably for swimmers everywhere.
Frigid Irish Lake Swims With Brian O'Neill
Brian is a dedicated long-distance swimmer based in Tipperary, Ireland, where he trains year-round in the chilly waters of Lough Derg and beyond. A lifelong swimmer and former triathlete, he’s spent the last three years focused on open water endurance swimming, driven by camaraderie with his local swim group and the scenic beauty of his training grounds.
Brian swimming with his open water group in Ireland.
As a First Wave tester, Brian plays a key role in helping FORM prepare for open water season by swimming in tough, real-world conditions, including icy winter swims at 4°C. His feedback, especially on GPS and pace accuracy, has helped fine-tune key watch connectivity features.
Brian has been using FORM goggles for two years and finds them invaluable, especially as someone who can’t easily read a pool clock without glasses. In the pool, he monitors heart rate and time to guide his effort; in open water, he relies on real-time data to track progress and stay on course—even on unfamiliar routes. With personal goals of completing swims up to 20 kilometres this year, including events in Ireland and Austria, Brian’s testing helps ensure FORM features work for swimmers going the distance in any condition.
Closer to Home
Locally, here in Vancouver, we hop into the ocean at Jericho Beach or head to our favourite lake, Sasamat Lake, to conduct testing with our team members. Temperature dictates turnout to these sessions, as even at the beginning of May, Sasamat can still be in single-digit temperatures, calling for thermal wetsuits, caps, gloves, and booties. Unsurprisingly, as the weather warms up, we get more participants, and annually, we have a company celebration of the first launch of our open water features out at the lake.
What’s New for This Year
Needless to say, we’ve been working hard over the past winter, and next week, we’re excited to share with you our updates and new features that we’re launching for this year. We will have another blog outlining these updates and upgrades, and we look forward to seeing you out there, whether racing, training, or simply enjoying the freeing nature of open water swimming.
To learn more about our open water features, click here, while here’s our full list of compatible smartwatches which can be paired with our Smart Swim 2 and Smart Swim 1 goggles for open water goggles + smartwatch functionality.
