Lessons from Conversations
(see the end of this section for the one big lesson)
When you're in a new place and trying to find your way around, you want to know where you’re going. Sometimes you might be forced to use an interface designed for a computer on your smartphone. This is annoying.
A lot of what a user cares about is social. When the Napa valley earthquake happened last month, many people first reached out to loved ones near the epicenter. A lot of what users want to see is to have a smoother access to information. That doesn’t necessarily mean more information (it often doesn’t!) but it means that information and communication between systems needs to be seamless. One big lesson: I think it boils down to users wanting to avoid distractions when getting the information that is important to them.
Some Crazy Ideas...
- Turn-by-turn directions. You'd use this application to help you find your way when you're walking or biking.
- To-do list. Keeps you productive by reminding you the next thing you need to get done.
- Notifications display. Probably not a standalone, but displaying notifications of all types more quickly than phone.
- Find my phone. Helps you locate your cellphone/laptop/other device.
- Cooking helper. Times your cooking for you and provides you an order to prepare ingredients.
- Touchscreen Fitbit. Higher-fidelity feedback than current FitBit.
- Health monitor. Monitors things like pulse and blood pressure.
- Spacial drawing tool. Allows user to draw in the air.
- Timezone checker. Contextually informs you what time zone the person you're calling is in, so you can plan meetings etc.
- Handwriting recorder. Records what you write when you write with pen and paper and digitizes it.
- Color reference pallet. Lets you reference different colors on your watch.
- Telegram. You don't need to look at your watch to tap out Morse code.
I ended up choosing the handwriting recorder. Why? Because as far as I'm aware it's really hard to make and it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
A Prototype
In the present day, the electronic world and the paper world don’t play well. When you write notes in a notebook, you can’t search through them with a query on your computer. You can’t store them on the cloud. Conversely, it’s hard to store drawings in the cloud. Sure, you can scan images, but that requires scanning equipment and you have to remember to do it.
So here’s a prototype of a way to fix that, by letting you store what you draw electronically.
Testing
I needed to test this out with some users. I tested this with my roommate, who advised that he’d be interested in a such an application. Here are some insights that stood out from our conversation:
- It’s annoying to have to think of starting the app. Why doesn’t it just do it automatically? The less the user has to think of using it, the better. It shouldn't even be there, if that's possible.
- This doesn’t address problems with content management. Having a paper notebook is often convenient. How do I manage my electronic notes? People used to storing physical notebooks might be confused with electronic notebooks.
- I can’t really read back my notes without a companion device. You can't look back like you can with a paper notebook. You need some "viewing screen" (e.g. your computer).
Comments