Observing and Interviewing
My first interview was with a videographer and film maker. At first, he came up with common frustrations of not being able to text or check the time as easily if his phone was in his pocket or backpack. With some more prompting, he realized how inconvenient it was to want to use his phone while filming a video when he is sometimes in charge of holding the camera and the mic. There are so many settings to change as you move around filming that there is no chance to use your phone. It may seem that you wouldn’t want to use the phone while doing all this work, but what if you had an app that made this task easier?
My next interview was with a self proclaimed improvisational musician. His biggest frustration was with the amount of clicks and interactions necessary to access a simple app like a pitch pipe app, or even music playback. First, you must put in your security code, then swipe, then get to the home screen, then choose the app, then wait for it to load. He said there were a few ways to deal with this issue: either extend the time it takes for your phone to lock or use apps that have lock screen functionality. As soon as he said this last bit, I was holding myself back from saying “that’s a perfect example of why a smart watch is useful!”
Both subjects said they often keep their phone in their backpack because they don’t want to be so reliant on the technology. This was interesting because it would seem that for both these people a smart watch may not be the best option, but they were both excited when I brought up the smart watch idea. I think it shows that smart watches can be for anyone, but you need to take into account how invasive the watch is to someone’s life. They also both acted out interacting with a watch in a similar way: they didn’t just press buttons, they actually shook their wrists and moved their arms around as if the imagined watch was capable of gestural interactions.
Brainstorm
1. Watch that senses the moisture from rain and suddenly an umbrella pops out of the watch to save you from the wetness
2. Watch that monitors blood sugar and possibly connects to insulin for people with diabetes
3. When raise hand in class, watch blinks and professors watch buzzes so no one is left out of the discussion
4. but first let me take a selfie…a camera watch just for selfies
5. Book reading…one letter at a time. Proven to be great for speed reading.
6. Music conductor app - as you move your hand around you affect the pitch and tempo of sounds
7. Find your phone, watch buzzes at different rate as you get closer and farther from your phone
8. Quit smoking cigarettes, watch detects cigarette smoke and buzzes or pokes or shocks you when you smoke
9. Control all camera and mic settings while filming. Quickly click watch to change mic volume level, exposure, frame rate. Also start recording both mic and camera at same time with a click of the watch
10. Digital lock for car, house, etc. Only unlocks when watch is present and type in code on watch
11. Climbing app, gives descriptions and directions of pitches as you climb up a multipitch mountain
12. Life countdown app, every time you look at your watch you see that the end is approaching, motivational or depressing
Prototype
I chose the music conductor app because it seems like something fun to play with. It’s not as invasive as apps with constant notifications so perfect for people who want to escape from too much technology, and it uses gestural queues which seemed to be exciting for both of my interviewees.
The main screen for this app, allows you to choose which instrument or sound you are going to play with, be it drums, synthesizer, violin, guitar, etc. The next screen is just a colorful visualization display that changes as you move your wrist around along with the music. As an example, with the synthesizer, you would move your hand up and down or left and right or forward and back to change different aspects of the sound. For the drums, you would shake your wrist with the tempo you want. These sounds you produce could be looped and played over with other sounds. Because this app requires gestures to cause sound changes, it is difficult to demonstrate this in a low fi prototype, but I did my best at being the sound maker as the user moved their hand around — I was a musical puppet and yes, it was very fun.
Feedback
A lot of issues came up with the prototype being low fi. The user asked, what do you want me to do? Because there isn’t direct audio and visual feedback responding to your motions (just me trying to hum, sing, and beatbox along with the user’s movements) it was difficult for the user to know what they should do. Possibly having text display that says something like “shake it!” or “conduct!” would help a user realize that they are supposed to move their arm around to make the sounds change and compose their own music. Although, once they realized that moving their wrist and arm caused me to make sounds, they got right into moving their arms and even bodies around. The user also wanted more options than the four given. This may be difficult with such a small screen, but another possibility is for the screen to list the options and instead of tapping the screen the user could just say the option and the watch would listen.
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