Introduction
When I first thought about the utility of the smart watch, I thought of it as a device that someone would have with them at all times. In that regard, I targeted working professionals, both older and younger and with and without a family, to get a better idea of how a smart watch can be integrated into one’s professional and personal life. To find my interview subjects, I went to a local park back home on a sunny day.
Observation
The first person I interviewed was an older woman with her family celebrating a party at the park. By profession, she works full-time in HR at a medium-sized tech company. On the side, she also had the role of a full-time mom, on call around the clock. With two jobs requiring constant communication, whether with issues at work or with her kids and husband, she found the regular motions of accessing her phone from either her back pocket or her purse rather cumbersome.
On a regular basis, she finds that she most often uses her smart phone for calling, texting, checking email, and performing web searches. Given the sheer amount of information she interacts with on a daily basis, she finds that even navigating through the notifications that pop up on her phone becomes a rather difficult task. Recognizing that the smart watch is a rather compact platform compared to the smart phone, she emphasized the fact that it was important for the clock face to utilize space very well to avoid clutter.
Especially for rather mundane tasks, she thought it was important for interaction with the smart watch to be easy. The entire appeal of the smart watch over a smart phone is productivity and hands-free easy access, so voice control was a necessary means of interaction. This was something she felt very strongly about, especially for older users who faced difficulty trying to read and type on small screens.
The second person I interviewed was a younger unmarried man who was at the park with friends. He is a United States Air Force Captain who has served in Iraq, has trained and recruited college students for ROTC, and is currently transitioning to civilian life doing IT at a tech startup. He normally carries his phone either in his front or cargo pockets, and this is really inconvenient when he just needs to check a notification or perform a quick search query.
On a regular basis, he uses his phones for calling, texting, Facebook, and checking email on his three different email accounts. When he is either training troops or traveling, he finds that he relies more on travel apps such as the GPS, compass, and maps. As a rather built individual, he finds that the small form factor of the smart watch is not very conducive to his productivity. He finds that trying to touch distinguished areas on a small touch screen is not necessarily the best way to interact with the smart watch, and he suggests that voice control would be much more effective.
He also emphasized the importance that text is large enough to read for users, especially considering the limited space of the smart watch. If possible, he would prefer everything be represented by graphics or some other abstractions, since it would be easier to recognize over time as opposed to trying to read when on-the-go.
For him, what would make the smart watch something he would use on a regular basis would be logical interactions and display of content with the goal of delivering information quickly in an easy-to-consume format.
Summary
It’s interesting to observe that despite their differences (older, family-oriented woman and a younger single man) and in consideration of their similarities (both working professionals in the technology industry juggling multiple roles), both of my interview subjects had a similar approach when thinking about what would make a positive and productive smart watch experience. They both considered alternative forms of interaction as very important on this new platform, and they also emphasized succinct yet important delivery of information to improve daily productivity. In terms of design, it was particularly important to address the display, since they acknowledged difficulty of both reading and interacting with the smart clock face.
Brainstorm
1. Notification forwarding: This would be a customizable app where the user, from their smart phone, would be able to set which notifications would be sent directly to the smart watch, indicated by either sound or vibration. They would then be able to respond to this notification by voice control to the watch itself, or for something more complicated by email, can opt to respond on their phone. If notifications are stacked, they can be viewed using horizontal swipes on the clock face, can be deleted with vertical swipes, and can be interacted with by a tap.
2. Siri for Smart Watch: This would be an adapted port of Siri for the smart watch platform. What has changed is that instead of holding down a button and speaking to your phone, you would interact with the watch by holding the speaker toward your mouth and asking your question. Important modifications are the ability to read quick summaries of wikipedia articles and dictionary definitions. This achieves many simple tasks that would otherwise be inconvenient if you had to pull your phone out and type out your searches.
3. Translation app: For travelers, this would be an app for translation from any given language to another. This can be either preset via a phone app, or it can be left open to allow for indication from which language to which with each translation. Control of the app is by voice.
4. Travel companion app: This app integrates maps, navigation, and the compass. You will be able to perform single point and direction searches by voice command. If you’re a more adventurous traveler and/or backpacker, you can either set the app to default as a compass, or rotate your wrist back and forth to access the compass.
5. Weather display: This would be a simple weather display for the current day, showing just the time and temperature with the background set to whatever the weather is. The application is perfect for a quick weather check before you head out for the day and defaults as a fancy lock screen.
6. Productivity manager: This would be a general to-do list that gathers information from your designated connected calendar and would give you notifications some time prior that can be set from your phone. You can also add to-dos and set time from both the smart phone app and the smart watch by voice control. This app can also be set to parse through texts and email (such as searching for the word “pick up” to indicate having to pick up a child or “action required” from emails), which can then be added to your to-do list and can be given a time based on what is parsed.
7. Voice recorder app: On a daily basis, one may run into instances where one wants to take quick notes. It’s inconvenient to take your phone out each time. What this app does is that it allows you to record a message by tapping the clock face. It will also record the location, time, and weather of recording for better context. This information is then sent to an email with a transcribed version of the recording, the sound byte, and the context information.
8. Child tracker app: You can set the boundaries by where you expect your child to be on a regular basis within a given radius. It will indicate with a sound or vibration when your child is not within the given radius. You can also add exceptions and change settings for deviations from a normal schedule such as field trips and weekends.
9. Quick text response: The clock face would display your text in a scrollable format with customizable font sizes or by voice, in which case you can program gestures for common responses.
10. Traffic assistance: The smart watch would interact with your designated GPS console, whether it is your smart phone or your car GPS, and report upcoming accidents that come up in your route. You can use voice control to tell your watch whether you want to continue on your route or be redirected, which will then reflect on your GPS.
11. Meal time app: You can set times when you want to eat on a daily basis. The smart watch would then vibrate at these times to indicate that you need to eat a meal. This app would particularly be useful for those who have irregular schedules, especially on call workers.
12. Power nap: You can tap on the clock face to indicate that you would like a timer to wake you up at a certain time. This app would basically be a convenient timer for the pure purpose of serving as a power nap. One tap with one finger would be a half an hour, one tap with two fingers would be an hour, and two taps with two fingers would be two hours. These are the default, but gestures can be customized in a smart phone app.
#5: Voice Recorder App
The app I decided to prototype was the Voice Recorder app. While there are already various Voice Recorder apps on smart phone platforms, it was not used, with users often opting to take notes in passing on paper or on a Notepad app, but with the Voice Recorder smart watch app, users will now be able to directly record what is said in passing, as well as documenting that information in a preserved digital form with relevant context to jog the user’s memory of the note.
I designed a simple watch out of cardboard with a slim band and a small clock face. This will give the watch a bit more style and make it unobtrusive to the user. With interactions being less about reading and more about tapping, motioning, and gesturing, there was less emphasis was on text readability and more emphasis toward a more minimalistic approach to design, with graphics and simple large text being the main visual cues.
The user could push the record button to start recording, which will then show the sound visualizer and timer, and, after done recording, can press the record button again to stop recording. This will then send a transcription of the voice recording, the voice recording itself, and relevant context information in an email to the user for archiving and easy access.
Testing
After designing the prototype, I then tested the smart watch with two test subjects, who then gave feedback, which I have compiled as a list of the top five concerns.
Feedback
1. Accidentally pressing the button - The user expressed the likelihood of accidentally pressing the button. If the button were too small, it’d be difficult to push, but in the likely case that the button is large and easy to press, there is a likely incidence that the user may accidentally press the button. This may cause issues with the users receiving a ton of spam mail from accidentally pressing the button and recording.
2. Volume recording - The user brought up the point that it may not be clear how loud the volume may be recorded. The user also brought up the issue of background noise. Some work would have to be done to optimize these functions, as found in other recording devices.
3. Storage issues - The user was confused how these files would be stored on the watch. Since sound files could be rather large, there was confusion whether the watch would have a local storage, or if it would be sent directly to the phone. Even then, there lies the question of whether the watch has the capacity to temporarily store such files.
4. Saving to the local app - The initial idea presented was to send these sound bytes via email, but the user also found that it may be more convenient to save these locally to a phone app that is better integrated with the smart watch app. Emails can easily be lost or disorganized.
5. Replay and saving - The user expressed interest in adding additional functions. The ability to replay after recording is necessary to ensure the recording turned out well. The choice to save will also allow users to decide whether the recording is adequate as opposed to the app automatically sending the recording each time.
Conclusion
After speaking with the test subjects, I understood there were multiple factors that I did not take into consideration. While it is important to keep the app intuitive and simple, as was my intention, it’s also just as important to keep in mind the functions that the user would find convenient. I also learned that while some ideas sound clear in theory, after taking the time to really interact and test it out, some discoveries arise from considering the work flow of the app. While the main exercise was thinking about the software, it was also just as important to consider the capabilities of hardware and really thinking about how this would be handled in real life on a smart watch with its current capabilities.
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