Interview #1:
My first interview was with Rod, an electrician that works as part of a construction crew who looks to be in his 40s. Rod is unique amongst his co-workers in that he does not have a smartphone – he still uses a flip-phone for communications, and specialized technology for other purposes (a camera to take pictures, a computer for email and entertainment, etc.). He has several reasons for not using a smartphone; one is that his work uniform does not have pockets where he could have quick access to his phone. Another reason Rod has not gotten a smartphone is that he distrusts their frailty. According to him, some flip-phones can be dropped from a second-floor window and suffer only a few scratches, while the average smartphone can become unusable after a drop from waist-height.
Rod vision of an attractive smartwatch is essentially a “wrist-phone”, a standalone, simplified smartphone that goes on a user’s wrist. Aside from making and receiving phone calls, this device should be able to get and send text messages and emails. (That it should also tell the time should go without saying.) That is all that Rod says he would want in a smartwatch: an easily accessible communications hub. Rod and I also noted that putting these features into a watch would also alleviate Rod’s current apprehensions towards smartphones – a wristwatch does not need pockets to hold it, and the chances that someone would drop a watch are much smaller than the chances of them dropping their phone. Thus, even if the smartwatch will be as fragile as today’s smartphones, the chances of it breaking would be much smaller.
Interview #2:
My second interview was with a gentleman by the name of David Nasatir who mentioned that he was in his 80s. His business card said that he was a visiting professor of sociology at UC Berkeley. Mr. Nasatir told me that he owns a smartphone, but only because his children had gotten it for him and showed him how to use it. When the conversation turned to smartwatches, Mr. Nasatir pulled back his sleeve to show me his wind-up, mechanical watch that ran without any electricity at all. Despite his fondness for his low-tech watch, Mr. Nasatir said that he would not be completely averse to getting a smartwatch – provided, of course, that it would fit certain specifications.
The most important issue for him, Mr. Nasatir said, is the presentation of information. Legibility of whatever the watch is displaying has the highest priority, and a simple interface (simple in that misclicks don’t happen much, and it is easy to see what options are available) matters too. Mr. Nasatir also said that he would want his smartwatch to be able to record memoranda, and to give him reminders at the appropriate (or at least pre-set) times. Another feature that he wanted was a general health monitor. Sub-features that were named included measuring pulse through the watch, watching blood sugar levels, and so forth. I feel that Mr. Nasatir wanted his smartwatch to combine the parts of his phone that he frequently uses with some of the capabilities of the LIFE ALERT system to make his life both safer and more convenient.
Overall, I learned that you can't please everybody with just one model. Some users want a minimalist simplicity, while others want to continue to merge their electronic devices into one single item. The best you can do is probably just start out with something that appeals to the majority (or the largest minority) and make it somewhat customizable, then branch out to hit the niche markets for the other minorities.
Part 2:
Ideas:
-App manager: If you press and hold the home button on your phone, a list of open apps appears and you can switch between them. This moves the list to the watch, letting you switch with fewer delays when you are working with multiple apps.
-Texting suite: Get and send text messages from your phone. Also includes options for voice-input messages and the option to have your messages read out loud to you.
-Wristphone: A smartwatch aimed at the cranky technophobes. Works as a standalone phone, and can send and receive texts/emails. May contain the Texting suite and have a simple internet browser.
-Phone networker: Many people get new phones because a small but important part (usually the screen) of their phone broke, or because they want a newer, fancier model. That means that some people have old phones lying around that still have most of their network and processing capabilities. A smartwatch could take advantage of the old phones to increase its own processing capabilities, and possibly even use them as extra memory (for non-essential data).
-Secondary interface for phone: Yesterday, I dropped my phone and most of its touch screen stopped working, rendering my phone virtually useless. If I had a smartwatch that could serve as a secondary input device (control the phone like you can control another desktop with the TeamViewer program for windows) I could have gone without a replacement for much longer
-Nike functionality: The various capabilities of a Nike smartwatch – calorie counting, exercise measurement, etc. A suite of medical monitoring soft/hardware probably fits under this umbrella too.
-Siri functionality: Voice input and output for the applications built into the watch by the manufacturer, possibly expandable to user-developed apps as well.
-Emergency button: Think LIFE ALERT, but as part of a classy watch that empowers the user instead of a cumbersome necklace/id card thingie that reminds them of their own frailty.
-Waterproof speakers: Can be used to play music in the shower. Can also be part of the texting suite or part of the Siri functionality.
-Laser pointer: A bad idea, but my housemate made me promise to include it when I asked him to help me brainstorm.
-Electric shock alarm: Can be used to wake up in the morning, or to stay awake while driving or while in class. Probably has some issues with manufacturer liability, but I’ve had situations where I wanted precisely this.
-Notification bar forwarding: You know how on your phone you can interact with some apps using just the stuff they put onto the notification bar? This would forward the stuff from you phone’s notification bar to your watch, so that you can interact with those apps with even less intermediate steps.
-Credit card activator: Instead of taking out your wallet, taking out your credit card, giving your credit card to a clerk, taking back your card, putting it back in your wallet, and putting your wallet back in your pocket, just hold your watch next to a scanner for 2 seconds! Much more convenient (and much less secure.)
My favorite was probably the electric alarm, but my housemates did not let me test the low-fidelity prototype on them.
My second-favorite was the texting suite due to how many details can go into such seemingly simple feature.
My Prototype:
I designed my prototype to imitate the somewhat-bulky men's watches I've sometimes seen in stores, though it would be easy to give it a slimmer belt to make it more compliant with women's fashions. I've made its screen rectangular to keep with the popular design where all digital displays are rectangular in nature. This would make it easier to develop apps for it, since designers will be able to fall back on familiar customs. The screen in a higher-fidelity prototype would glow wheneve someone touched it, and for a few seconds afterwards.
There are 2-4 essential apps in the quick-access bar on top of the watch. (Phone, text, and email in this case.) In the middle we see a display of the time, and on the bottom is a scroll-wheel which you can use to scroll through the other installed apps and select the one you want to open.
Here, we select the texting app.
Since a keyboard is too bulky to be used on a smartwatch screen we use a finger to write out what we want to input, one letter at a time. There is also a button in the top right corner that will let the user switch to voice input, and a small box at the to to see what they've wrote so far.
Feedback:
The biggest problem we discovered was that it is very hard to bring the watch up to your ear when it is sitting on the outside of your wrist. On other other hand (figuratively, not literally), the voice input methods and the finger typing did not encounter any problems that an instruction window pop-up did not fix.
Insights:
I feel I benefited from this this project. I learned that people do not appreciate having to adapt to new positions, like bringing a watch on their right hand to their left ear when they want to listen to the attached speakers. (They try to bring their right hand to their right ear, and feel rather silly.) Aside from that, the problems one user faces are not the same ones another encounters: different people will find a product uncomfortable for completely different reasons.
On a more specific note, the size of a clickable icon that people consider to be too small to conveniently click correlates roughly with the size of their pinkie fingernail. People also find tracing letters and numbers with their fingers to be convenient, but have issues with symbols that are not continuous lines (!#*%), as well with 'enter' or 'backspace'. Those should probably added close to the voice input button.
A monochrome UI got less protest than I expected, but that may have been because I failed to specify that it would be like that in the real deal too. In the future, I should be more careful in explaining details to potential users.
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