Part 1:
Subject #1: 26 year old personal trainer. Met at 24 Hour Fitness.
Summary of Conversation:
I thought anyone in the health/fitness industry was a target user for this product so I decided to interview a personal trainer. When asked when was the last time he remembered not having his phone readily available he immediately mentioned whenever he trains, swims, or runs. Throughout the day he normally keeps his phone in his pocket but when he is working out he puts it in his locker. He said that he would also like a smartwatch because he wears a regular watch regularly so the transition would be seamless. In addition, he would like it if the smartwatch could track the amount of food and water he intakes, his sleep, and be used as a stopwatch to measure time between sets. When he does not have his phone available with him he usually wants to check any updates or messages he received and track his time while performing various exercises (he currently uses a stopwatch to do this). He went into detail about how he uses mobile phone to check his messages and notifications and his bulky stopwatch to time himself. With a smartwatch, he envisions being able to track time and run metrics on his sleep/daily activities in the background.
Summary of Lessons Learned:
By the end of the interview I was convinced that athletes, personal trainers, runners, swimmers, and most people in the health/fitness industry would benefit from having a smartwatch. They cannot carry their phones with them while they are working but can wear a smartwatch. Some applications that would be useful to them are an inbuilt pedometer, stopwatch, and something that track their sleeping habits, calories burned, and activities. It would also be useful if the watch could provide analytics on everything being tracked. In addition, the smartwatch can be used to quickly check messages when someone is busy and does not have time to respond.
Subject #2: 13 year old student. Met at a public library.
Summary of Conversation:
I mainly talked to adults but I also wanted to get a kid’s perspective on how they might use a smartwatch. The subject was mainly concerned with messaging and communication applications such as texting, WhatsApp, Facetime, Snapchat etc. Although she said she usually carries her smartphone with her, she cannot use it when she is playing sports or when her parents say she can’t. She described in detail the tasks she wanted to perform including talking to her friends and listening to music. With a wrist worn interface, she thinks she would be able to perform the same tasks but also be able to listen to music with a more lightweight device.
Summary of Lessons Learned:
Smartwatches could be ideal for parents who want their children to use their smartphones less because smartwatches usually have less functionality and can be used to only check/receive notifications instead of responding to them. In addition, smartwatches provide a much more lightweight solution to listening to music. It could be used as in iPod Shuffle but with a screen for better navigation.
Common Patterns Across Interviews:
Both subjects experienced the similar problem of having to turn on their mobile phone, swipe right to unlock the screen, enter in their passcode, and click the app icon just to check their messages and notifications. All these steps could be bypassed by having the smartwatch immediately alert the user. Both also mentioned instances when they could not use their smartphone but probably could a smartwatch, like when they are running, swimming, or playing sports.
Part 2:
Brainstorm Ideas:
1. Text Messaging and Calling: Text message alerts show up on the display when a user receives a text. If the user talks to the watch, it will convert speech to text and reply/send messages. The user can call others by talking to the watch as well (especially useful if both hands are occupied).
2. Weather Application: Displays the weather, chance for precipitation, and temperature and can even provide you with the 5-day/week forecast by swiping (swipe left and right to display next and previous forecasts respectively). Can also include a traffic report.
3. Notification Alerts: Think iPhone’s push notifications where you are alerted instantaneously about any event. However, this is ideal for the smartwatch since users don’t have to deal with the hassle of unlocking their phones to view a small alert.
4. Calendar/Reminder Application: Displays the list of activities/tasks the user has for the day and upcoming week. Converts speech to text to set tasks on calendars and set reminders. The watch will alert the user when an event is about to start. Useful for when someone is in a hurry and wants to record a reminder before they forget.
5. Pedometer: Simple application that can run in the background and tracks the distance traveled and number of steps taken. Updates in real time.
6. Fitbit for Watch: Application that tracks activity, calories burned, amount of time sleeping, and other analytics. Also updates in real time.
7. GPS Simplified: Think Google Maps but with simplified features. Uses speech to text to set destination. Only displays the current location (using a pointer like in Google Maps), the directions the user needs to take, and the estimated time till he/she reaches the next direction/destination.
8. Personal Assistant Contactor: Ask for a Taskrabbit or call an Uber or Lyft. Tasks like these don’t require much effort or interaction with the device and only require the user to press a few buttons.
9. Payments through Watch: Web and mobile applications like Venmo, Square Cash, and Stripe demonstrate that one does not have to enter lots of information in order to pay/receive money. Just like the aforementioned applications, users should be able to pay money through their smartwatches. Users can enter in the payment amount by typing on the watch. Screen size isn’t as much of an issue when typing since there only needs to be 10 numbers/buttons.
10. Life Alert for Watch: Calls 911 and notifies paramedics of the user’s current location. Majority of the display would be a red button and everything else (notifying emergency personnel) happens through the backend.
11. NextBus and iBart for Watch: Application that displays the next time a bus will come to the bus stop closest to the user (using geolocation) and also can tell them when the next Bart, Caltrain, or Amtrak arrives. Arrival and department times update in real time. Beneficial with a smartwatch since users do not have to constantly pull out their phone to check when the bus or train is coming.
12. Utilities: Similar to the utilities in the iPhone, it provides you with a compass (display is a simple NSWE compass), option for recording audio (display is a big red dot that starts recording audio and converts it into an mp3), or searching for contacts (use up and down buttons to navigate the alphabet to find the first couple letters the name starts with and autocomplete will list all the possible entries).
13. Music Player: Watch uses Bluetooth to relay the song being played to wireless headphones. Think of an iPod shuffle design but without wires. Users first select which playlist they want and either choose which song to play or put it on shuffle.
Prototyping:
I selected the “Music Player” idea because not only am I music aficionado, but I think it would be extremely useful to listen to any song one wants with such a small, simple, and lightweight device (can also be useful for listening to music while running or when one does not have their iPhone with them).
1. Popup that displays the application’s name and logo until the application loads (similar to iPhone applications).
2. Select a playlist: Displays 4 playlists at a time and the user can scroll down (swipe up) to view more playlists.
3. Select a song: Displays 4 songs at a time from the playlist chosen by the user. The user can scroll down (swipe up) to view more songs.
4. Defaults to playing the first song in the playlist. The “Song Title - Artist” will probably not fit in the screen so whatever letters do not fit will be truncated and like in the iPhone, will move left so the letters in the left get cut off and the letters in the right are shown. This process cycles until the song ends. The < button on the top takes you back to the playlist page.
5. << button goes to the previous song while maintaining the same layout. Also uses speech recognition so that users can say “previous” to perform the same action.
6. > button plays the song while | | button pauses the song. Also uses speech recognition so that users can say “play” or “pause” to perform the same action. When song ends it goes to the next song, which has the exact same layout except a different title.
7. >> button goes to the next song while maintaining the same layout. Also uses speech recognition so that users can say “next” to perform the same action).
8. The plus increases the volume.
9. The minus decreases the volume.
10. Shuffle icon randomizes the song order. Also uses speech recognition so that users can say “Shuffle” to perform the same action. Icon turns into different color to show that the user clicked it.
11. Repeat icon puts the song on a loop. Also uses speech recognition so that users can say “shuffle” to perform the same action. Icon turns into different color to show that the user clicked it.
Music players have a lot of buttons and actions but I tried to take a minimalist approach. I made the play button especially big because I wanted that to be the central focus of the application and I wanted users to have easy access to it. I also added voice recognition in case both the user’s hands are busy or if they have difficulty pressing some buttons.
Insights:
1. A “How to” in the introduction screen would have been useful because the users did not know about the voice recognition. The page could also explain explicitly what all the buttons do and provide a mini-tutorial.
2. One of the testers suggested that some people might not understand the shuffle and repeat icons so it might be better to have them listed as words instead of icons. The testers understood all the icons however.
3. A tester would have liked other features such as “Most Viewed Songs”, “Top Rated Songs”, and “Favorites”. Although there is little room in the “Select a Playlist” screen, I could have added an “Options” link that redirected to another display and allowed the user to select from those playlists there. Another (and probably simpler) idea could have been to append these options to the top or bottom of the playlist choices.
4. A tester wanted the option of viewing all the song choices at once instead of having to click a playlist to only see a subset of the songs. He also felt that only displaying 4 songs at a time might be too little if the playlists are large.
5. A tester suggested that although all the buttons
have good spacing and are all clickable, it would be nice if he could simply
swipe right and left to go to the previous or next song respectively.
6. The application overall seemed pretty self explanatory for the testers and they could navigate the application without much instructions. The design is fairly similar to the design in the Music Player in the iPhone but they still would liked to have seen a few modifications.
Comments