Design 01: Watches in the Wild

Below is a series of steps I went through to design an interface for a smartwatch application.

Step I - Interviews & Understanding User Desires

Interview 1 – Mid-20’s African American Male – Post AA Degree - Worker at UPS – Nexus 5

When his phone isn’t immediately available, it’s usually in his pocket or on a nearby table. He doesn’t like the feeling of having a larger phone in his pocket, and prefers to put it down when he gets home / visit’s a friend’s house. At work, he needs to move many packages and needs to use his legs at times, so he prefers not to keep his phone on his person at work. Instead he will put it in his backpack/locker. He spends much time at work alone, and would love to listen to music without endangering his smartphone. He would love to be able to wear Bluetooth/wireless headphones with music being streamed from his phone with a smartwatch used as a controller. He imagines being able to change the song with either his voice (since his hands are frequently full) or with his fingers with a quick swipe from right to left to switch to the next song or a tap on physical buttons to increase/decrease volume. When away from his phone and outside of work, his primary goals is to check his Facebook stream, check the time, and check if he has any messages from friends. He also uses his phone as an alarm clock, which he keeps near his bed. As a heavy sleeper who frequently oversleeps, he would like a smartwatch that would provide vibrations in addition to his smartphone playing music to help him get up. He doesn’t like the idea of apps on smartwatches due to the small screen size, but would prefer a smartwatch to be an intelligent extension of his smartphone.

Interview 2 – Mid-20’s Chinese American Male – Post AA Degree – Motorola Droid Maxx

When his phone isn’t immediately available, it’s usually on his desk or on a nearby table / on the ground. Something he dislikes a lot about his phone is that the battery life isn’t very long. He thinks his battery has problems, but since he’s out of the warranty period and has much time until his contract ends, he puts up with frequently putting his phone on his desk to charge. His desired uses of his phone when it isn’t available is to check the time, and check his calendar for potential events in that day. He is currently unemployed, and each day is very variable. He tries to stay organized by putting all of his events on Google Calendar. He admits he feels very dependent on his phone and wished for an implementation of a device that would have a longer battery life and be able to perform fairly simple things like check the time, check for messages (he doesn’t care to respond right away most of the time but just wants to know what they are and will respond only if it’s very important), and check his calendar for the events of the day (he would like to know what events are when, and where he needs to be at what times). In terms of interaction with a smartwatch, he said that he didn’t want to have to actively do anything like press a button or say a command. He would want the watch to be smart enough to know where he is, calculate how long it would take him to get to his next event, and give him a heads up 5 minutes before he needs to leave to arrive at the next place on time. That is, he doesn’t want to have to press a button for the display to turn on or perform multiple taps to get said information. He notes that he doesn’t notice his phone vibrating/ringing in a loud area, and would want a smartwatch to not stop vibrating until he taps the screen in acknowledgement.

Interview 3 – Early 30’s German American Male – Manager at Salesforce – iPhone 5

When his phone isn’t immediately available, it’s almost always on his desk. He admits that he is very forgetful and goes to and from his desk a lot to attend many meetings. On top of this, he is a very heavy smartphone user, and sometimes remembers to bring his phone but needs to leave it at his desk to charge. His meetings span on average three to four different buildings on a given day and Google Calendar is incredibly important to his workflow as it tells him where the meetings are and when. He also uses Salesforce1 daily – an application that helps him manage his work related communication and documents. He would like to communicate to others via this application by sending messages and posting statuses, and would like to read reports that others send to him on his phone. It fortunately has a web client which can access via his laptop when he doesn’t have his iPhone, but he’d prefer to carry just a phone to a meeting as opposed to a laptop if he isn’t presenting. Outside of work, he is an avid hiker and biker, and would like to be able to check his health / speed metrics. It is awkward to bike while checking his phone, so he usually puts it in his backpack to avoid dropping it. He would like a smartwatch that would display information like his heart rate, speed, and distance travelled. He understands that smartwatches take up a lot of battery to keep the display on, so he said he’s okay with a smartwatch that needs a wrist flick to be activated. He wouldn’t mind having to charge a smartwatch daily if it provided the capabilities he desired.

Interview 4 – Mid-to-late 20’s Caucasian Female – Software Engineer at Salesforce – Galaxy S4

When her phone isn’t available, it’s usually in her bag. She hates the common trends in how female jeans/pants have tiny pockets, and flagship phones are getting bigger and bigger. She wants to be able to have a phone with flagship specs without having too large of a screen. (She admits that the trend in small pockets in female pants isn’t going to change anytime soon). Out of all the interviewees, she is the only one who would claim making phone calls was a priority use case for her phone (she frequently calls her boyfriend). The things she would want to do when her phone isn’t immediately available would be to check the time, check for messages, check her calendar, and check for social media updates. She currently has a smartwatch (the Pebble smartwatch) and discusses the frustrations of it. She said she only uses it because she got it for free (she found it on the ground and nobody claimed it at the lost-and-found.) She said she would only be interested in buying a smartwatch that was always on, had a more responsible display, and was more “intelligent”. She didn’t want a smartwatch to have its own apps. She wanted to be able to use the computation power, apps, and contextual awareness that already existed on her phone instead of having to have her watch do the same things at the expense of battery life. She would want a smartwatch to be aware of what she is doing (working / jogging / cooking / idle) and display relevant, useful notifications. She is okay with a smartwatch having buttons, but she would prefer the primary means of input to be voice or a touchscreen. She doesn’t really care to open apps on her watch, but would like to be able to see notifications on her watch and swipe them away once she’s read them. At the same time, she said she would like to be able to set modes/hours where her watch would sleep so that she isn’t bothered during a movie or in her sleep (she charges her smartwatch next to her bed, in addition to her phone).

Interview 5 – Group of 4 engineers at Salesforce between mid-20’s and late-20’s – all iPhone users

Although I didn’t go through a formal interview with these people, they were interested in the topic and I asked them some relevant questions casually. Most of them leave their phones in their pockets or at their desks charging when they aren’t immediately available. They, unlike the Android users, don’t find themselves in the situation of not having their phone immediately available as much. However, they note that they have a habit of charging their phones whenever they are near their desk. They feel like their battery lives are sufficiently long, and their phones are compact enough to carry everywhere. Even so, they still wanted smartwatches because they wanted a more convenient way to access information they could from their already accessible phones. They wanted to be able to view the time, their notifications, calendars, and messages from their wrist even if their phone is on the table in front of them. In their minds, smartphones are very much associated with work (with work-specific applications, work calendars, work email, etc.) but associate smartwatches with self-expression, style, convenience, and fun.

Commonalities 

All people interviewed were heavy smartphone users. Most usually had the problem of having their batteries run out mid-day, and then having to leave their phone at their desk to charge. This led to them having many scenarios where they wished they had their phone on them but didn't. Most of them said that their reason to use their phone was for social (texting, social networks, etc.) or utility reasons (calendar, access company files, etc.) Only one would say "making calls" was a top priority in their phone usage (Caucasian Female Software Engineer to call her significant other). Almost all agreed that smartwatches wouldn’t help them connect to other people in better ways – but instead simply make their life experiences more convenient. (The person who disagreed was the Salesforce manager who could imagine getting notifications more immediately would mean he would be able to respond to emails and messages more quickly.) They all wish phone batteries lasted longer and/or wished for a smartwatch that would have a better battery life (they are okay with the fact smartwatches won’t be able to do everything their smartphones can). Most would want smartwatches to be an extension of smartphones – except without all the fluff. They wanted devices that would show them notifications, and most are okay with not responding to such notifications until later.

There was roughly a 50:50 split on iPhone users to Android users (4 iPhones to 3 Android phones). Out of the Android users - some expressed that they like flagship quality phones, but don't want such large screen sizes as is the norm for most Android flagship phones nowadays. Some expressed that they would even want to use a smartwatch over their smartphone for common minimal-interaction uses like checking the time, checking for notifications, and checking their calendar. Something I didn’t expect was that many of the people interviewed wanted to be able to read their messages/emails/notifications, but didn’t care if they couldn’t reply from their smartwatches. One person (Mid-20’s Chinese American) captured this desire as simply wanting to know what was happening with their friends as soon as possible.

Part II - Brainstorm and Test A Design

Brainstorm:

1. Calendar app – calculate time to travel to next event on Google Calendar and displays an estimate of when to start heading over

2. Biking / running app – display info such as time / speed / heart rate

3. Local deal finder – find out if any local vendors/merchants are offering a deal

4. Unified message notification app – get notifications from your messaging apps (Facebook, WhatsApp, AIM, etc.) to your watch in a streamlined interface

5. Location/time-based Reminders application – set up reminders when you are near a store / at a certain time of day to accomplish something

6. What to do for fun app – application that uses the user’s location and tries to find fun things to do like a local board game event, dancing event, or art/music event

7. Payment app – pay at a cash register by tapping your watch to an NFC panel.

8. Calculator – make simple calculations with voice input

9. What song is this? app – similar to SoundHound, but with voice input

10. To do app – an app that allows you to make mental notes to yourself like things to do / buy / look up (on Google) later

11. Interactive Navigation app – application that gives you verbal turn by turn instructions (you can ask it “can you repeat that last thing? or what is after that?” and it will respond)

12. Voice recorder app – record a conversation with a friend/boss

13. Friend finder app – app that displays a notification if you are physically near a friend

14. Timer/stopwatch app – an app that assist in tracking races, keeping track of the oven, etc.

15. Call app – instead of holding your phone to your ear, you can wear a Bluetooth headset and control your phone from your watch

16. Guitar tuner – an app that would help a guitar player tune his instrument

Prototype:

I decided to prototype on the payment application. I took the center of toilet paper rolls and cut them to form a wrist-band and cut out circles of paper to form wristwatch faces of different stages of the app. My goal was to put tape on the backside of the faces and swap them out as the test users went about navigating the app.

I also made a screen that represents what a user would see at a payment station. It shows the user their list of items, the list of prices, calculations of tax, and a final total price. I put an icon on the bottom left of the screen so that users would understand that the device has NFC capabilities. For newcomers to the technology, I also put the text instructions on this screen -> to have them tap the display with their smartwatches to initiate a payment.

In the design of this application, I wanted the transition to be seamless. I didn’t want users to have to pull out their phone, or have to scroll through menus/apps. I wanted the smartwatch to be aware of how its user wants it to function, and match that expectation. The majority of the interface on the smartwatch is based on tapping check marks and X’s based on what they want. I made a diagram demonstrating the flow of the app. The gist is that users will tap on icons, follow on-screen instructions, or wait for the message to fade to transition from one screen to another.

Testing with a user:

I went to a person, told him that I was trying to test out a very low-fidelity version of a payment app that might exist in the future using smartwatches. Without providing instructions, I told him I wanted him to figure out how it works and what his feedback would be.

He was able to quickly figure out the interaction I had in mind between the cash register screen and the smartwatch. He was also able to quickly figure out how each screen interacted with each other.

Feedback:

He found that the smartwatch implementation of payments to be “very convenient”. He said that he would really love for this app (or something similar) to become a reality. The best part of the app in his mind, something I didn't consider when designing the app, was that he got to save all of his receipts digitally. He shared how he sought for a very long time a way to reconcile his desire to keep track of all his financial expenditures and his desire to be able to organize all of that information other than piles upon piles of receipts. He also expressed that he would love for an application to work behind the scenes as well to organize all of this in some streamlined web app.

Regarding the design of just the smartwatch payment process, the tester said that he would much rather pay with a smartwatch than with cash, credit, or debit. He wouldn’t mind that some company would have his credit card information as long as he had the convenience of being able to pay with his watch without any fees. However, he didn’t like the idea of producing his signature on his smartwatch. It wasn’t a security concern, but he felt as though the screen was too small and would prefer more space to produce his signature. He suggested that he wouldn’t mind if the signature process occurred on the cash register device instead. He liked the simplicity of the UI – that is, no clutter on screen, and having simple black text on a white background. He liked how there weren’t confusing interactions, but merely simple buttons. He shared how he didn’t like application designs that required swiping from a side or corner (which he found unintuitive) and that he appreciated how taps were all he needed to move from one screen to the next.

Another piece of constructive criticism he offered was that if a user accidentally pressed "yes" to pay at the first screen, but realizes there is a mistake or changes his/her mind, there is no way to back out and cancel the transaction.  He said he'd like a cancel button that is available on the "Please Sign" screen.  Another suggestion was to keep the interface consistent in terms of the check-marks and X's.  He suggest I commit to either using the design with one on the left and the other on the right, or use the one where both are on the bottom.