Watches in the Wild

Introduction

I chose to talk to moms of young children, because I thought that young children take a lot of time and focus, as well as the need to constantly be with their parents. I went into the research with assumptions of how a smart watch could help moms whose hands were otherwise full of their children. Throughout the process, I made a lot of discoveries that both followed my assumptions and went against them.

To conduct my interviews and observations, I spoke to mothers spending time with their children at Habitot, a children's museum in Downtown Berkeley.

Interviews

Scroll down to Key Findings for a summary of the interviews.

1. Mother of 7-month-old baby

• Why did she check her phone? Just needed to know the time related to her child's nap. Made her schedule working around child's naps. Child needed naptime every 2 - 2.5 hours on a regular basis.
• Any other reasons to check phone? Needed notification from another parent about coordinating naptimes. Scheduling was very important.
• She cared most about checking the time, much less about other functionalities her phone was capable of.
• Also interested in taking pictures: "capturing a moment when I can't find the phone"
• Tries to focus most of her time on the baby

2. Mother of 2-year-old girl

• Why did she check her phone? When expecting a call, when checking if diaper changing time, when making grocery lists.
• If she needs to do a task on phone, can usually put daughter down for a moment.
• Usually keeps phone in purse or on table out of reach of daughter.
• Health concerns with smart watch: worried about radiation on her wrist near her daughter all the time.
• Thoughts on smart watch? Useful to speak into wrist to check something online.

3. Mother of 15-month-old and 3.5-year-old

• Why did she check her phone? Check email, get calls from husband, trying to meet up somewhere or husband is on the way.
• Leaves phone on table in house or in purse when out of the house.
• Doesn't always know where her phone is — busy with kids.
• Phone currently at Habitot in bag near some bench by the front wall.
• Says she "really [doesn't] need a smart watch, checks emails end of day when free"
• Usually plans things in advance and like to know what will happen. Example: schedules 3-4 playdates in a week.
• Would use smart watch for nutrition item checking.
• Naps = 1 on 1 time with her older child, or time to take a break
• In same house, not same room
• He sleeps when he's tired between 11:30 am - 2:30 pm
• Want to write down special moments — thoughts, feelings, date and time
• Write with everything fresh in mind

4. Mother of 3.5-year-old boy

• Why did she check her phone? Making appointments, arranging playdates.
• Usually leaves phone in bag, or when she's home it sits in a random place.
• "Not such an important device to me, depends on use of phone"
• Phone currently at Habitot in bag near some bench by the front wall.
• First thought: would use smart watch for checking time.
• May use a smart watch to check weather or read the newspaper.
• Thought about a smart watch as a way to take pictures because she doesn't always have her camera or phone on her.
• Commenting on a smart watch camera: "If it's close to you, use the moment"
• Thought about using smart watch to entertain son with mini shows, games — to keep him busy when she is busy.

5. Mother of 1.5-year-old girl

• Why did she check her phone? Wants to take a picture with the phone.
• Sometimes the phone is hard to reach— she keeps it in her backpack, and the backpack is either on the baby buggy or with her.
• Thought about a smart watch with a camera.
• Then decided she might not do it because didn't like feeling of watch on wrist.
• Reconsidering her need for the phone: "Not that I need the phone..."
• Except for communication to talk to husband
• Main phone functions that could be on smart watch: basic communication, taking pictures, google maps.
• Maps - reconsidered, saying too small to display on wrist.
• Ways she uses photos on her phone:
• Shows pictures to her daughter from her phone, daughter likes seeing herself.
• If her daughter is hot, can't cool down, she shows her pictures of cats. (Daughter says meow all the time.)

6. Mother of 4.5-year-old, 2.5-year-old, 8-month-old

• Why did she check her phone? Read e-books, use for texting, online dictionaries (need to cross reference and translate, because she speaks to her kids in another language), take pictures.
• What if phone isn't readily available? If unable to look at dictionary at a certain moment, tells children that they "need to look it up when we get home."
• Smart watch: "I wouldn't use it"
• 8-month-old would chew it.
• Not teething friendly, not BPA free, not gonna buy.
• Wouldn't know how to use smart watch well because the screen isn't big
• Discussing speaking into smart watch: Lots of background noise with kids.
• To check time I just get my phone out (right now)
• Problem: Kids might want one too.
• Tries to keep things away from kids if they are not toys.
• When the phone is out of sight, it's out of mind.
• Don't always want it present. 
• "If I can't use my phone, I don't use it."
• "Taking photos might work," but issue of privacy:
• "Would you want people to take your picture without you knowing?"
• Afraid of it being in the wrong hands.
• Ran back to me after I walked away: "One more thing!"
• Answer to first question again: uses GPS on phone if someone else is driving.

Observations

• One mom had her hands full with a baby bottle, jackets, and her purse. She tried to check the phone one-handed all while keeping watch over her child.
• Moms were always holding children — in the moms' arms, wearing those front child harnesses, holding children's bags or hands.
• Moms left their own bags and purses around while being with their children in Habitot, focusing on their children more than phones that are left in bags.
• When moms did have their phones on them, they always checked one-handed, or took photos one-handed.

Key Findings & Lessons Learned

• While visiting Habitot, moms devote the time specifically to their children. In general, moms seem to focus on their kids, not on their phones.
• With smart watches, the moms didn't need something to make basic tasks easier, because those aren't always the urgent tasks.
• Many tasks I originally thought were urgent (calls, texts) weren't on the top of moms' minds, and didn't concern them in the exact moment they played with their kids.
• Many moms thought of checking the time as the first use of a smart watch. Time is very important with scheduling, appointments, etc.
• Most moms brought up interest in the ability to take pictures, yet most moms I observed did not take any pictures while at Habitot.
• Moms were excited by ideas of ways they could use the watch to interact with their children (photos, nutrition, games and videos).
• Young children bring a new concern of how a child reacts to a smart watches — will the child try teething on the watch? Is it too close in reach to the child? Is there a fear of radiation? Will the child pester their mom to get one for himself or herself? If there's games on it, does it become a toy in their eyes?
• Moms really want to spend time with their kids — the watch can not be a distraction.
• If there is voice activation, it needs to be crisp, because kids create lots of background noise.
• Most checked their phone to keep communication up with their spouses.
• Most moms were not excited by the idea of a smart watch at first, but when they started brainstorming possibilities that were more out of the box (and not generic phone notifications), they became more intrigued.

Brainstorming

1. Naptime scheduler that syncs to your baby's internal nap clock
2. Nutrition scanner that you can put your family's dietary restrictions and allergies into and then check labels on food products by swiping the watch face over them
3. Family Moments camera app so that you can take photos at any moment and not lose precious memories of your children
4. Selfie app for babies to take pictures while being held by their moms
5. App that alerts you when you're walking too far from your phone, so that you'll at least never leave the house without it (to make sure you will always be able to communicate with loved ones)
6. Watch that you can snooze notifications and alerts on when you want to focus on your child and not be disrupted by technology
7. Reading app — for when you are holding your child in your arms — tells a story aloud and shows pictures
8. Grocery list app — takes in a grocery list that syncs from your phone or online, can scan items into the phone to check them off the list, and makes a noise when you go past an item you need in a store (you also give the app the store layout)
9. Stroller dashboard — active while pushing a stroller, it has shortcuts to sending texts, checking calls, getting the time, and upcoming appointments (in an easy to read way)
10. Newspaper headlines app so you don't lose track of world events while watching your kids all the time
11. Large clock that changes colors the closer your next appointment / calendar event is in time
12. Playdate-maker — shake hands with another mom wearing a watch with the same app, exchange contact information and sync schedules to automatically create a shared playdate

TimeRemind

I chose to focus on idea #11, which I am calling TimeRemind, because this most universally addresses the concerns and focus of the moms I spoke to without overly distracting them from their children: constantly checking the time, and scheduling.

TimeRemind is a clock that syncs with the calendar you already use online or on your phone (ex: Google Calendar), so that no updates are made to the smart watch app directly. Each day, TimeRemind goes through all calendar events on that day only, and starts to give you a visual reminder of them one-by-one (via the changing color of the time from blue to red) when the start time of the event is approaching. It also uses GPS to time the urgency (change to red) of how long it will take to get to the event from where you currently are located.

When one event occurs, the next event on your calendar for the day takes its place at the bottom of the app. When there's nothing else on your calendar for the day, the app simply becomes a normal clock face. TimeRemind can be used as the default clock on the smart watch, to provide the ability to keep time that most people want while enhancing the experience with useful schedule-tracking features.

User Testing

Mother of a 10-year-old girl

I met a woman on BART who went to Haas and now works long, 12-hour days at EY. I asked her to go through the app and explain to me what she thought was happening on the screen on her wrist. She also provided feedback on the app itself.

• The time and calendar event in the prototype didn't relate to her as much because she usually missed dinners because of work. This threw her off a bit.
• Looking at the clock led her to discuss checking the time to see where she or her daughter were in their normal daily routine.
• It looked like the reminders she saw on her phone if she needed to get somewhere.
  
• When the screen finally turned to red, she exclaimed "It's really red now, I'm late!"
• She believed it would be useful and "then I wouldn't have to consult my phone."
• She mentioned that it would be "really cool if it told me where I was compared to where I need to be."

Her feedback showed that the app needed to be more clear that it already used GPS capabilities in order to update the reminder color at the right pace.

Photos from my interaction with the first user are below.

Mother of three college students in their early 20s

I met a woman in San Francisco who owned her own deli and had three children currently in college. Though she was not a mom of young children as in my original user group, I was interested in how that changed her perception of the app.

She was confused at first about how a person would add calendar events to the watch. The app looks more like a clock than a calendar, so she didn't know how the events connected to the application.

After going through the app, she said that it seemed more useful to moms in her case, with grown children, that it would be to moms of young children. "When you miss a ballet class, life goes on, but when you miss a financial deadline..." she trailed off, noting the horrifying thought of a financial deadline that has passed unnoticed. She said that she had more of her children's deadlines to worry about now that could easily be forgotten, such as tuition deadlines, because now her kids weren't in the house and seen by her everyday.

She also mentioned that the watch itself reminder her of the Samsung watch, and thought it being waterproof and smooth all around would be useful to her as she worked in the kitchen of the deli.

Insights & Reflections

• I had very positive feedback on the app as an enhancement to simple clocks on watches or phones.
  
• It's difficult to clearly test an app that shows the passage of time. In the future, I would need to refine my testing process or else make more screens showing the changing color of the clock over more time.
• TimeRemind would need to be very clear that the application synced with data that you already provided on your phone or online, so that no input was needed into the small watch screen itself.
• GPS is something people want in a watch app focusing on timely event reminders.
• The app isn't just useful for event reminders but also deadlines. In the next iteration, I should focus on my newly discovered user group, moms of grown children.