I describe below how I used iterative design process for finding problems people face while using mobile applications on the go. I then proceeded on building a small prototype for a smartwatch application.
PART 1: Observe and Interview
Observe
I observed people around in the bus, on the BART, on campus, in my house on usage of smart phones and any interesting patterns on using watches. Observations were made in Berkeley and San Francisco, so results are geo-biased.
Key takeaways:
1. Most men kept the phones tucked in their front pockets. I found that both left-handed and right -handed men tucked phone in their right pockets. For listening music, they would just plug-in the headphones and still keep the phone in their pockets.
2. Some women tucked the phone in their pocket. A large number of women kept their phone in their handbags. For listening music, I found that most women would carry the device in their hands while walking or commuting.
3. Most people who are running or exercising attach the phone to their arms.
4. Some
people just use one hand when operating a phone whereas most people use left
hand to hold the phone and right hand to interact or type.
5. I also observed the use of regular watches among people around me. I found a large number of people wearing watches on their right hand, even though they were right handed. I am a right handed person, but I have always wore a watch on my left hand. This might be trivial, but I wanted to note that whatever smartwatch app I build, it should not bias if the person is left-handed or a right-handed.
Interview
For interviews, I wanted to interview people from different age groups and professions to get more ideas.
Interview # 1
John (name changed for anonymity) is 68 year old man living in a retirement home in Berkeley. He also suffers from temporary dementia. He is living in a retirement house for more than 10 years with his wife. He is originally from Philadelphia and moved to California about 20 years ago.
Key takeaways:
1. John has an iPhone 4 which his son gifted him a few years ago. He doesn’t carry his phone at all times. He only uses the phone to talk to his son in New York and video chat with this 4 year old grandson. He also has a few friends whom he calls frequently.
2. His wife doesn’t like technology and she doesn’t own a phone.
3. He didn’t like the loud sounds his phone produces when ringing or when he is calling anyone. He likes the haptic feedback of his phone. He asked me if I can teach him how to reduce the volume or mute it completely.
4. His usage of phone is restricted to mainly talking to friends and family. He doesn’t use Internet.
5. He doesn’t like texting and feels it is impersonal. He would prefer calling the other person.
6. He likes ‘Contacts’ on his phone the most since he doesn’t need to remember any numbers. He also notes the birthdays and anniversaries in his phone. He likes how his phone reminds him of birthdays.
7. He also showed me the picture of his grandson on the phone. He told me his son saved this picture on the phone.
8. I also noticed that the phone had a sticker with his name. On asking about the sticker, he said in case of emergency if he cannot make a phone call, he hopes someone will look at the phone and call the emergency numbers. He had listed his son’s cell phone number and the retirement’s home front desk number.
9. On asking what kind of apps he would like on a smartphone or a smartwatch, he took a minute to think before saying anything. He said he would like to hear his grandson many times and talk more to him often. His son is a single father and needs to be around his grandson when John wants to talk to him.
10. On asking what will he miss the most, if he loses his phone, he said his contacts and talking to his family. He would have to use the common phone at the retirement home but he doesn’t have a diary of all numbers. When he was young, he kept a small diary with him, but he doesn’t have one now. His wife has a diary which he might will use to contact family.
Interview #2
Elaine (name changed for anonymity) is a woman in 30’s working at UC Berkeley for more than a decade in administrative capacity. She grew up in the Bay Area and is pretty tech-savvy. She has a three and a half year old daughter who has just started going to prekindergarten recently.
Key takeaways:
1. Elaine uses her phone very often. She described in a typical week she would use the phone for – driving around using Google maps, grocery lists, reminders, emails, contacts, texting, calling, and calendar.
2. She keeps her phone with her all time.
3. She said she would feel very “lost” and “insecure” without her phone. She is always concerned about her mom and daughter. She wants to be reachable all the time should any emergency occur.
4. She likes Yelp, Google maps, Facetime apps mostly. She wants to preserve more space for photos so she avoids installing many apps.
5. On asking what she would would miss the most if she lost her phone, she answered that she would miss her contact list the most if she lost her phone since there is no other way she can store the contacts.
6. I started asking her specific scenario based questions to probe further. At home, she uses the phone to look up recipes and talking to her mom using Facetime. Her daughter plays with the phone and takes pictures. She notices that she can operate the phone better than her since she has tiny fingers to click at the right spot.
7. At work, she says since she has access to her computer, she avoids using email except for calling. Email/Calendar/Internet etc. are all faster on her computer.
8. On asking about usage of phones at movies/hotels/flights, she said she Yelps a lot and recently she used her phone to check-in for a flight. She saw someone else do it on the airport and she didn’t know about that until she saw her friend doing it. She always carried a printout before this. The airline also sent her a text message after she checked-in which she was very happy about. She wasn’t sure if the check-in was successful until she got the message back.
9. I started asking her what she feels about smartwatch. She took a moment to think and wasn’t sure if she needs one. She said it would be nice to carry her purse, keys and just the watch if phone could be replaced by the watch. She needs to keep track of where she kept her phone and forgets her at her home sometimes. She said if the watch is tied to her wrist, she will have one less thing to worry about.
10. She said, at work, she wouldn’t need a smart watch since she has her computer in front of her.
11. She was able to articulate very well the challenges of a smart watch in terms of limited space for input and problems in reading small font size.
12. At home, she said it will be nice to Facetime with family and it would be cool. She also wanted to have something where she could hear her daughter in school in the middle of the day. She constantly worries about her daughter and wishes there was a way to look and hear her.
13. She also thought about using a watch for directions.
14. She also thought of a smartwatch which reminds her that she has turned off lights, turned off gas in her house. She sometimes forgets to switch off lights.
15. As a parent, she was concerned about introducing another piece of technology in her house. She felt that technology is causing kids to not go outdoor and do things indoor. She wants her daughters to read books, ride a bike rather than play on a phone all day. This was an interesting piece of information on technology adoption and how parents think about new devices.
PART 2 : Brainstorm and Prototype
I brainstormed and thought about the following ideas.
Ideas:
1. Smart Check-In – Performing check-in at movies/hotels/flights through a smartwatch without opening your phone
2. Check my kid – Hear/Look at your kid anytime throughout the day. He/she could be in the next room or in school. Hear or look through the camera at your kid to ensure he/she is doing fine.
3. Directions – App which gives you directions for a specific purpose with voice commands in addition to immediate directions
4. Emergency call – App which can call/text your loved ones when you click the emergency button on the app or perform a specific interaction – tap 4 times maybe.
5. Recipe finder – App which can provide recipe instructions in form of pictures or videos without having to open the phone
6. LightWatch – A watch that can multitask as a torch and can be used for lighting when you are walking down the dark roads on Telegraph Avenue at night.
7. Business Card – Shake hands with someone and tap your watches to exchange business cards
8. Payments – Pay for a coffee by taping your smartwatch at the counter
9. Find friends – You are at a party and you want to find all your friends that are in your network. Use the watch to point you where they are and meet them
10. Dicta-watch – Talk to your phone and make notes. Has anyone seen how Louis Litt uses his Dictaphone in Suits? He records all his important thoughts and instructions to his secretary Norma on a Dictaphone
11. SpyWatch – Use watch as a spycam
12. ShopWatch – Imagine you are Trader Joe’s or Walgreens. Using your position in store, it shows that you are near the aisle which contains cereal or rice, which you want to buy.
13. Speed dating – Fill out a questionnaire before you go on a speed dating session or in a bar. The watch can have multiple illuminated colors – blue, green, red, yellow etc. depending on personality types determined by the questions you answered. You will also have a color on your watch. You can then find your soul mate using the illuminated watch colors and compatibility determined by the questions you answered. If I am a hot blue, I might want to hang out with a cool red :P I can also find out her likes/dislikes on my watch to make the conversation more meaningful.
14. Where’s my cat? – Find where your cat is in case she has a habit of going under the table or above the cupboard or she gets lost unfortunately. It also plays cool youtube cat videos when you are not searching your cat.
15. IoTWatch – A watch that controls your lights, oven, air condition, TV etc in your house
16. Flashcards – An app through which you could learn anything via flashcards. This could be a new language. Kids could use it to learn shapes, colors, numbers etc
17. Locator – After crusing around for 15mins, you finally park your car in San Francisco and you want to remember the exact location. You can tap on the watch to record this GPS location. The watch can later remind you and provide directions to reach the car.
18. SkypeWatch – App which can help you video chat over the Internet using watches
19. NetFlixWatch – Imagine you are looking at time in your watch. Now through some crazy way a virtual screen comes up in front of you after you press a button on your watch. Now using this virtual window, you can see NetFlix movies
20. UberWatch – Request Uber from your watch
Prototype
I decided to go with idea#20 – UberWatch. I wanted to build this as I was keen to understand the similarities and differences of interactions on a smartwatch as compared to a mobile phone for an app I am familiar with.
Below is my prototype. Also, I have attached screenshots for each screen.
I used cardboard, stickies and sharpies to create my prototype. I made 11-12 screens thinking about the interactions that a person can do while ordering an Uber.
I also wanted to be creative and added a camera interaction to the smartwatch.
The green part in the image below is my imaginary camera. I wanted to know how users would use the camera and how they would orient their hand to click a picture.
Feedback
Nemo is a 26 year old student at UC Berkeley. Below are the some of the observations things he said and observations I made when he was using the prototype.
1.His initial reaction was that the watch is very "boxy". He likes things rounded and with curves.
2. The date was not in 24 hour system, which did bother him.
3. He is an iPhone user so was confused why there are two buttons apart from the single home button in the center. This made me realize the bias I introduced in the design since I am an Android user.
4. He was able to understand the bar on the top as notifications.
5. He expected to see the home screen when he clicked on the center home button. He liked seeing familiar icons such as Facebook, Uber, Music after he clicked the home button. He liked how the time was still being displayed in the Notification bar.
6. He then clicked on Uber and a flash screen appeared. The main screen with the map appeared. He was not overwhelmed with the amount of information on the screen. I asked him what does he think his address is by looking at the screen and he answered it correctly as "Market and 5th". He asked me if the checkmark on top of uberX means that its chosen by default. He would want to ensure its uberX since he doesn't want to waste money by ordering a fancy car.
7. After he tap on "Set Location", he realized the next screen asked him to "Request uberX". He then said - "Oh! I just set the location and now I should order the car. That makes sense, this is how I do it even on my phone."
8. Then the screen with "Requesting closest driver" came up. He said he expects this to be a screen with the background faded. He said he is afraid on the phone and even now on watch that if does anything or click anything, his car request might be cancelled.
9. He then saw the driver confirmation screen where the car was confirmed. He noticed that there is a call functionality. He asked me where is the rating of the driver. I had missed putting the driver's rating on the screen. He also asked me if I could text the driver instead of calling him. He was able to identify the name of car and the number plate.
10. I told him to imagine that now he is in the car and he gets a notification from the phone or a vibration. He looks at the watch again and saw the notification. He said it was nice that the watch found I am around Golden Gate.
11. I asked him how would he click a picture. He first wasn't sure and asked me where is the camera lens and where does he need to tap to click the picture. I realized that my prototype didn't have enough navigation aids. I gave him a minute to think and he then figured out the right hand orientation I had in mind. But it wasn't very obvious to him.
12. He recommended me that he should be rotate the main display so that he can take selfies and look at the picture while taking the picture or have 2 cameras similar to iPhone.
13. He was able to understand how to save pictures.
14. He then looked at the receipt and was able to understand that he will be charged $25. He was able to say the start and end address, know how to rate the driver.
15. He suggested it would be nice to have speech input rather than navigating a map.
I believe the key takeaways from the testing phase -
- Not to build everything in the Android paradigm
- Taking pictures with a watch can be awkward and confusing
- Speech input can be used instead of text input or tapping the watch
- Maps can still work in the limited space provided right instructions/symbols are provided.
- Haptic feedback can be used in addition to sound/light
- Users need more navigational directions to be comfortable with the app. New interactions like rotating the watch might be needed for some interactions(e.g. taking selfies etc.)
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