Step 1: observing and interviewing
Subject 1: 24-year old research assistant at a biology wet lab
This interviewee thought of a few instances in which he didn’t have his phone readily accessible but wishes he did. The first that came up was when he was biking, as he bikes through Berkeley/Oakland a lot. Because he most often biking on familiar paths, he wouldn’t need a navigation app on a piece of wearable tech (although he mentioned he could see how this would be useful for someone else), but he did mention that some sort of auto response app (to reply to those who text him while he is biking) would be useful, especially if he was biking to meet a friend. This led to the idea of an app that would allow you to select the person you are meeting and where you are meeting them, and then would send them an auto-response along with a geo-tag so they knew how far you were from the meeting spot.
Another situation this interviewee thought of was when he was in a family dinner/important meeting where his phone may be accessible but it would be rude to use it. He also thought some sort of auto-response app would be useful in these situations (although he mentioned that the auto replies that come pre-programmed into phones already seemed kind of rude/written in a way that no one actually texts). This interviewee thought of a last idea that was inspired by his job as a research assistant in a wet-lab. Because the work he does requires a sterile environment, you need to minimize the amount of things you are carrying when you enter the part of the lab he works in. Therefore he doesn’t bring his phone in. In this context a piece of wearable tech like a watch would be useful because some of the experiments he is running require precise timings and long series of complicated steps. If the watch could buzz at pre-programmed times and remind him what the next step was (i.e. “Pipette X into Y”), this would be very helpful.
Subject 2: 18 year-old high school student
Similar to the previous interviewee, this interviewee mentioned biking (as well as driving) as times when he wishes he could use his phone but can’t (or at least isn’t supposed to). Again, he proposed a navigation app or an auto-response app for a smart watch in these situations. When I asked for situations that were maybe more unique to people his age, he mentioned that his high school didn’t allow cell phones to be used during school hours at all – not in class and not in the hallways between class. In this case, a smart watch would be useful as a way to receive texts, emails, and Facebook/Twitter/Instagram notifications. He mentioned that it isn’t necessary to be able to respond to these notifications via watch because if something was really interesting/required his attention, he could pull out his laptop and respond.
Step 2: Prototyping
Brainstorm:
1. Auto-response app that knows when you are on the go (i.e. driving/biking) and will send a pre-programmed response to those who text you
2. An app that will allow you to select who you are meeting and where you re meeting them and will automatically send them updates of how far you are while you are biking/driving
3. An app that can look at your calendar, note “important event” where you may not be able to use your phone, and will only then redirect notifications to you watch
4. App that continually notifies you (through sound/vibration) when a certain time interval has passed and will remind you of the next step in a series of steps (i.e. when running an experiment)
5. A notification center app for texts/emails/social media that allows you to receive notifications and dismiss those that you don’t want to see again, but save (“mark as unread”) those that you would want to re-appear when you access them on a different device (phone/laptop/tablet)
6. An app that connects to your LinkedIn and allows you to keep track of when you are meeting important professional connections (by tracking handshakes)
7. An app that allows groups of people to play a game of Assassins – you are assigned someone to “kill” and have to do a certain gesture (touch watches maybe) to “kill” them, and then the person they were assigned to kill because your new target. Certain locations are designated “safe spots” where you can’t kill/be killed.
8. A geocaching (“real-world treasure hunt”) app that alerts you when a geo-cache is in a certain radius and provides hints to allow you to find the treasure
9. An recording app that allows you to record interviews (with the other person’s permission of course!) in a way that feels less obtrusive than a phone or laptop but still delivers the same product
10. An app that allows you to change the channel or increase/decrease the volume on TV without a remote and without having to get up
11. An app that will vibrate/beep if you are leaving a maybe 30 ft radius of your phone so you can’t leave it in a restaurant/bar/cab
12. An app that syncs with your calendar app and provides a countdown for when each lecture is over
Chosen idea: I chose idea #4, which allows you to pre-program instructions with associated time intervals (via a phone/laptop) and then remind you via the watch through sounds/reminders when each time interval has passed and what the next step is. I chose this one because it is easily expandable past the original biology experiment inspiration to situations like cooking, where you also don’t have ready access to your phone.
My prototype:
In creating my prototype, I decided to create both the mobile experience (creating a new routine that would be used on the watch) and the watch experience (using that routine with a timer and reminder alerts). I made this decision because the small screen and lack of textual input made creating a new custom routine (i.e. an experiment) on the watch a bad experience, and a phone/laptop lent itself to this step better. Additionally, in thinking of the scenario in which this app would be used, I figured that the routine would be made beforehand (i.e. not on the go) so that this was acceptable.
For the mobile experience, I prototyped the flow of creating a custom routine. A routine would consist of steps, which in turn consists of a step description (limited to 140 characters), a time interval, and an alert type. These steps can be built up into complicated routines spanning hours. For the watch experience, I decided to keep it simple because the app would simply serve as a reminder for a real-world activity, so not a whole lot of interaction would be necessary. The main watch screen of the app consists of the step description and the time remaining. In creating my prototype, I intended for the main input to be swipes: swipe right to preview the previous step, left to preview the next step, up to dismiss the step, and down to go to list view of all the steps. The output (in addition to the information on the screen) was intended to be a vibration alert or a sound alert, depending on what the user chose.
Feedback:
Because I didn’t have access to another person who works in a wet lab (the original inspiration behind the prototype), I tested my prototype on my roommate who likes to cook. In that context, here is their feedback.
- Swiping: In situations like cooking, swiping may not be the best input mode because often your hands are dirty while cooking. My user suggested voice input (“next”, “previous”, “dismiss”) or some kind of gesture (flicks of the wrist, etc).
- List view: My user told me that swiping down to see the full list of steps was not intuitive. Instead, he suggested a small button in the corner to access the list of steps, although this brought up two issues: using touch when your hands are otherwise occupied and fat fingers causing small buttons to be ineffectual.
- Confusion about unit of a “step”: Another piece of feedback my user brought up was some confusion about the unit of a step. He wasn’t sure whether the countdown displayed on the watch was a countdown till the displayed step finished or a countdown until that step needed to be started. Additionally, he raised the point that some steps wouldn’t always have an associated time (such as chopping vegetables), so in the mobile view, there should be an option to not add a time to a step.
- Amount of text: A last piece of feedback was that 140 characters may be too many to display on a watch screen. Instead, my user suggested having a "step title" field and a "step description" field. The screen with the countdown would display the title and double-tapping would reveal the description.
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