Matt - Watches in the Wild

Part 1

Interviews

For this assignment, I talked to two people working for Cal Housing Operations. One was a female manual laborer while the other was a male driver. I was looking for people to interview while I was walking near Unit 3 when I met them relaxing in the shade trying to hide from the heat. They were both very cheerful and happy to answer my questions.

The lady actually mentioned that she had problems accessing her phone in the past when she was on the toilet. She said this cheerfully as if she wanted to make a joke, but I do believe she was being completely serious. Diving deeper, she normally doesn’t keep her phone in her pocket while she is at home. And when she then does need to use the toilet, she sometimes will forget it. However, this is only a problem at home as when she goes out her phone is always in her bag.

The actions she wanted to perform while forgetting her phone in the restroom is to normally browse the news or play a game. She mentioned she likes reading current events and playing a multitude of games including temple run and despicable me. When asked to perform these actions on a mobile device, she somewhat struggled a bit more as it was hard for her to imagine using a wrist worn interface for the same purpose. She could instantly make the scroll gesture for browsing the news as well as the turn gestures for temple run-type games. Yet when asked how these interactions would translate to a smaller device, it was much harder for her to visualize the smaller screen.

The second person interviewed was a driver. He frequently transported goods for Cal Housing and spent much of his time on the road. For him, the biggest concern was the use of a phone while in his car. Oftentimes, he will be driving when it is illegal for him to use a phone, and he may need some information from his phone. His most used applications by far where the mapping and calling apps from his phone.

Having him imagine a wrist worn device that could perform the same functions, he immediately made the science fiction comparison. He envisioned a device that he could simply talk to and perform the actions. Calling, texting, and mapping would be a simple command and the device would speak back like an Artificial Intelligence. His interview was much smoother as he seemed to already have some preconceived ideas of how technology could improve.

Part 2

Ideas

· Play games similar to the Wii remote using the gyroscope on a smartwatch with the display sitting on your forearm.

· Play games using simple swipe up, down, left, right, and tap on a small screen for a smartwatch

· Play games not using full body motions but simple motions of the leveler feature of a gyroscope. This includes many balance games, for example trying to keep an imaginary cup of water upright while it’s rocking on the smartwatch.

· Play games that don’t require the use of a screen, this includes many voice games. Includes trivia and storytelling games primarily.

· Use holograms to display a screen in the air. The screen is also a touchscreen, such that it is basically another small computer on your wrist, but a smaller device.

· Make a smartwatch that a driver can use by attaching it to his wrist and interacting with his car’s screen. This effectively connects his phone to his car which allows him to use it hands free

· Make the smartwatch a hand gesture based input device for a phone, different hand motions allow different functions on the phone. Example: Waving your hands calls the last person who you talked to

· Smartwatch can give you all the notifications from your phone to see while driving

· Make the smartwatch completely voice controlled and AI-like. Interact with the watch only with your voice. Talking to your watch should be like talking to your secretary or personal assistant

· Smartwatch is a tracking device for when you drive/exercise. It can track your movements wherever you are and intelligently give you directions to your next destination

· Smartwatch is simply a smaller phone where it shrinks your phone screen down

· Smartwatch driving application is for reading out loud all notifications on your phone such that you can hear them

· Smartwatch driving application tells you where the police are like a police scanner by saying it out loud

· Smartwatch has preset gestures which perform functions, kind of like speed-dial. Example: swiping up will call your mom.

Prototype

My prototype is the personal assistant AI-like smartwatch. This smartwatch actually looks just like a normal analog watch, but with voice assistant capabilities. This watch is coupled with an earpiece such that it can talk back to you and respond. The earpiece also has one of two microphones, with the second being in the watch, such that you don’t always need to raise your wrist. The watch has the internals necessary to communicate with your phone and but also acts as and looks like an actual watch. This prototype has no screen either and relies solely on voice to communicate back and forth, however it does look like a normal stylish analog watch.

To prototype this, I used paper for both the earpiece and watch. I also acted as the AI in this instance, speaking back to them after they say commands.

Prototype Testing & Feedback

I found a user who uses the toilet with their phone and also drives frequently. The first thing she wanted to do with the prototype was take a Snapchat. Unfortunately, my device did not have the capabilities to perform such an action. Her action to perform the Snapchat though was very much inline with what I expected it to be. She simply said,“take a snapchat”. The same applies for the next actions she tried to take. She also wanted to browse facebook, and said “browse facebook”. If the device worked, I do believe that these voice commands are very intuitive and do not need to be taught. Next I asked her to pretend she was driving. In this instance she also used very intuitive commands: “Map me home”, “Call mom”.

Her feedback on the prototype was overall warm. She did understand how to perform commands easily, inline with what I expected. She also thought the idea of using a normal looking watch was good since she didn’t like the idea of a bulky smartwatch on her wrist, although the entire idea of having a constantly in earpiece was less than ideal and potentially uncomfortable. Other than that, the idea of a good AI was appealing as it would offload a lot of the work to the computer and the user does not have to do much thinking.

Final Thoughts

This assignment was interesting as it allowed me to talk to others about how these devices. From what I have learned, people wish that devices just work. It can be hard to sometimes understand how they work and most would like to abstract themselves from that and simply use a device that always works.