Design 01: Watches In The Wild

Part 1: Observations in the Wild

The first thing I did was walk into a CVS pharmacy and walk up to the cashier and started my interview after thinking that they would be my target group. In my mind, I thought that cashiers usually cannot use a smart phone on the job and I thought this was a great approach. I quickly learned that this was not the best approach. I introduced myself and with their permission, started to ask my questions, which were in some form:

1. Do you own a smart phone? (He answered yes)
2. Do you have problems using your smart phone? Are there times you wished you didn't have to reach for your phone to get some sort of information?
3. Do you wish you had something you can wear or attach to you to receive this type of information? 

Of course, it didn't go that smoothly. The answer to the second question was no. It was something he couldn't think of and thought that his smart phone was all he needed and he felt that the idea of wearables appeared unnecessary because your phone provided all the functions you needed on a day to day basis. It puzzled me, but it made me reconsider. Most of our participants have never thought of any smart wearable technology. Asking about how wearable technology would help someone reach a goal is like asking them about a goal itself. This was something that gave them trouble and they couldn't really help straight out ask them. 

Perhaps the first experiment resulted in utter failure, but it made me reconsider my approach. Instead, I decided to start observing my environment to see how people currently interact with their technology. I stopped by the local street on Shattuck and Center, viewing the shoppers at grocery stores, the pharmacies, runners, and walkers as they interacted with their technological gadgets. Everyone carried a phone with them, even if they didn't have to. For example, I paid careful attention to the runners who had their phone with them for the sole purpose of only music and receiving texts.

These observations lead me to explore one particular interest group that focused on the Health and Fitness Section.

Part 2: Interviews in the Wild

This time, I focused on seeing how a watch can improve the lives of the Health and Fitness in the lives of both athletes and regular people. It appeared to me that people were focused about staying healthy, and keeping track of their lives to manage their health.

I interviewed two people at 24 Hour Fitness. I asked them about their smart phone usage and other devices they used that they noticed athletes used or they themselves used to keep track of their workouts or improve their workout experience. After interviewing with athletes that were focused on training at a facility, such as 24 Hour Fitness, I decided to go on a run with a 2 year graduated college student and asked him a few questions as I ran with him. This first group of people represented my first group of persona:

The Regular, Younger Athlete Persona:

Age Group: 19-35

Notable quotes: "When I'm working out, I want to carry as little weight with me as possible."

Let's represent this group with a person named John. John is rather into technology and is rather updated with all the latest gadgets, but when he is working out, he wants to feel light and doesn't want to carry too much with him. He believes that it becomes troublesome to put your phone down when you are working out or to carry it with you when you are running, but currently that is what he needs to do. He also uses Nike's fancy gadgets because they help him track progress and his workouts. He really enjoys having music as a part of his workout because it keeps him pumped and usually has a few designated playlists for his workouts.

Goals:

• Track and show health and fitness progress.
• Listen to music while working out.
• Stay updated with their social lives.
• Carry lightweight technology.
• Feel good and proud of their workout.
• Demonstrate and show their progress to the world

Frustrations:

• Carrying too many devices on them
• Safety concerns with additional devices
• Losing track of their gadgets and devices
• Lack of hands-free devices for their workouts
• Bad voice-recognition handling on current phones

Features they would like for smaller devices such as smart wearables:

• Rep counter for weight training (possible with a magnetic sensor system)
• Fitness, workout tracker.
• Bluetooth enabled
• Heart Rate Monitor
• Able to check quick texts and emails, or make quick replies
• Able to play music
• Hands-free, lightweight, and convenient

This group of people brought up an important point. Phones weren't made for athletes. Athletes want to be focused on their workouts and having a phone and additional devices just adds more nuisances and devices to keep track of. If there is wearable technology, they want it to be able to replace the basic needs of their phones when they are in "athlete mode".

However, I also explored another group in the health and fitness sector. I visited CVS and Walgreens pharmacy to talk to them about their patients and ways to help their patients, which consisted of an older age group. I talked to one older patient and one pharmacist about their patients to produce this persona.

Older Patients and Medical Patients Persona:

Age Group: 45 and above.

Notable Quotes about this group from a pharmacist: "Most medical devices are too seemingly medical. They are wearables, but aren't convenient to wear and makes the patient feel uncomfortable"

Let's represent this group with the name Lindsey. Lindsey is older, but she is still very focused on staying fit and healthy. She visits the doctor regularly and has been to a hospital for medical reasons and has been attached with medical devices before so that doctors can monitor her health. She doesn't do intense exercises, but still tries to do light exercise daily and stay fit and healthy.

Goals:

• Stay Healthy and Fit and live a good life.
• Allow her and medical professionals to Monitor her Heart Rate
• Feel safe and enjoy her daily exercises.
• Show doctors her progress
• Receive texts from her kids.
• See how long she's worked out for

Frustrations:

• Medical devices often feel inconvenient and make you feel "unhealthy" so you need to be tracked.
• Medical devices often feel invasive.
• Medical devices doesn't make her active. It becomes a nuisance and necessity
• Wearing medical devices doesn't make her feel control of her fitness and health

Features they would like on their wearable device: 

• Easy interface to track their fitness
• Heart Rate Monitor with progress for both her and her health professionals 
• Text Messaging System or able to receive texts or calls.
• Alert and Notification System for Emergencies
• Medical reminders.

This group of people wanted to feel in control of their health. Current medical devices are too obviously medical devices and people who often wear them are associated with having some kind of diagnosis or problems. It makes them feel like they are always in need of monitoring, but this group wants these devices to be more friendly to the user, but also provides the medical professionals with the information they need.

There was another group of people that I interviewed as well that didn't quite fall into the other two categories. This was an older group that liked the phone and needed it, but felt it was too burdensome to always carry around. They were still focused on fitness and health, but had similar problems because they felt it inconvenient to carry phones around with them when they exercise or do other activities. They have daily needs of jobs and are usually interact extensively with their phones for phone calls or mailing systems.

Older Group Focused on Needs of Job or Society:

Age Group: Over 25

Notable Quotes: "It's inconvenient to always carry my phone around because of the needs of my job, but there are times, such as when I'm in the shower, or going on a walk, that I don't want to carry my phone with me, but be alerted of incoming calls or messages."

Let's represent this group with the name Hubert. Hubert has to always keep his phone with him because he it is a part of his job. He is a programmer, but he exercises daily and makes an effort to stay fit. However, having the phone around too often becomes burdensome and becomes impossible at times. He doesn't have to take every phone call, but he needs to know of incoming calls or be alerted that he misses calls when he is out so he can answer and reply when he is back in the house.

Goals:

• Stay fit and healthy and exercise without carrying his phone around.
• Be notified of calls or incoming messages so he can get back to them when he is out
• Send messages while he is away from the phone or on a walk
• Keep track of his daily fitness and track it

Frustrations:

• Feels too bounded to phone.
• Current notification devices allow little user interaction to be effective.

Wanted Wearable Features:

• Be able to leave the house and do exercise without a phone
• Reply to messages without a phone
• Check and receive calls
• Track his fitness and sync it to his phone or laptop
• Have a device that can be used anywhere and anytime, even in the shower or while on a run.

This group brings up a valid point. Current pagers or notification systems that sync with phones are unable to provide any interface to respond to calls or messages the way phones do. However, a phone cannot be carried around everywhere and at times it is inconvenient and not feasible to have around. However, you would still like to access the small benefits of the phone without the actual burden of having a phone around. A wearable should be able to view and respond when necessary.

Part 3: Brainstorming Wild Ideas

1) Waterproof Watch that can sync to receive phone calls, mailing, and text-messages

This device will be wearable and can be used anywhere. It allows for convenience and can replace phones in places where a phone is not really needed. It is more feasible because it is literally accessible anywhere.

2) Heart Monitor and Tracker

This device will provide a way to track and monitor your heart rate and will allow medical professionals to also track this without attaching other invasive and uncomfortable devices to someone.

3) Reminder and Notifications

This device will mainly for medical purposes. Medical professionals can sync reminders to your watch to remind you to take your pills and notify you of any upcoming appointments. This will make the patients' life easier by taking this stress off of them and be easier for patients to view. The patients can view all reminders and swipe through them.

4) Find my Device App

This app is targeted towards people who always need to look for their phone, but often misplace it. This will send a ping to the phone with a click of a button on the smart watch. The smart watch will also make a radar to show you how near your phone you are.

5) Goals app

This app will have a screen for each goal. You can make the goals on your phone or laptop and then it will show up on your watch. You can swipe through each screen for a goal. This will be important for you when you think of a way to achieve your bucket list. When you have accomplished a goal, you can check it and it will show up as a success and disappear from your watch. It will now be an accomplished goal you can see on the phone

6) Right Music, Right Times

This app organizes your music based on genre and you can select the type of physical activity you are doing and it will generate songs and playlists based on your physical activity. You can create add songs and your own group of activity. It allows easy management of your music to suit your needs for the times you need it.

7) Stay Focus Exercise App

This app syncs with your phone, disabling it for a set amount of duration. However, you can still receive phone calls. This app will also allow you to receive text messages, but won't allow you to reply to your texts. Its idea is to help you stay focused on your activity.

8) Services Tracker App

This app is useful for waiters or people who provides services such as in restaurants and grocery stores. People with phones can text help to a number and lane aisle, or table number and the person providing the service can be notified and move to help those in need of help. This will help waiters at restaurants and store managers / sales associates.

9)Map My Run

This app allows you to map your run first on your phone or your watch and then will guide you on a run that follows this path, including your current run times, and how far you've ran.

10) Workout Guide with Voice Recognition

Sometimes you have a workout sheet from someone with workout names of workouts you just don't know how to do. What is an A Sit-Up versus an Ab Crunch?! This app will allow you to say the name of your exercise and it will show you step by step how to do your workout.

11) Workout Calculator

Sometimes you just don't want to just bulk up on muscle. This app will help you determine the right workout for you. If you wanted to just tone your muscles, it will give you more reps and lower weights. If you wanted to gain more muscle, it will output lower sets and higher weights. There will be three options: Muscle, Tone, and Fat Burner.

12) Workout Organizer

Athletes have different workouts for different days, but usually use some kind of paper or online sheet to organize their workouts. This app will allow you to create your app to suit your needs for the days you want. If you want a leg day workout, you can create it. You can name your workout, name each exercise in it, and the number of reps and sets in it. You can also download popular workouts from people online so you don't have to make your own! You can make your own workouts and share it with the world as well!

13) Trace my Path App

This is an app that will always run on your phone and will track where you have been throughout the day. This way if you ever lose any belongings, such as a wallet on the street, you can view the path that you took that day to retrace your steps and find your wallet.

14) Track my Fitness App

This app tries to incorporate many of the elements from the other apps. It will have a heart rate monitor, music that is synced from your phone's playlists, a way to count how many repetitions for a specific workout, and can provide you a stats graph on a phone or computer so you can see your progress. It will tell you how many calories you burned and can also track your runs. This data can be shared with friends or even professionals. It will be dated and stored for each day so you can see monthly and even yearly progresses. 

Part 4: Insights From The Wild

After having the user prototype my watch, he quickly noticed that the sleek functionality of the watch and its ability to go from single screen to double screen mode made it quickly appealing. Since a watch offers a small screen, it can be quickly limiting in its functions, but the ability to flip a second screen makes it very appealing. However, he did notice some problems:

• Currently, the functionality of using two screens is rather confusing. 
  
• The user needs better guidance on how to make use of the two screens. For example, he mentioned how the screens would move from top to bottom. That shouldn't happen. The bottom screen should be designed for input and any user interaction. The top screen should be for other usage.
• He liked having a personal achievements from the app, but he mentioned that there should be a way to share these personal achievements. Being able to obtain achievements and share these makes working out more social and gives people incentive and goals. Everything becomes more fun when it gets people competing.
• He also noticed how the user interface was not clear on what was clickable and what was not. The buttons should be more defined.
• There is a second screen, but often, such as the music option doesn't really make full use of the second screen for user interaction. Since it offers a second screen, user interface should take advantage of that second screen for additional functionalities, but the contents of each menu item should provide enough information as a single screen as well.
• The single screen should offer user interaction, but less of it, not get rid of it overall.

Nonetheless, he was also pleased with some of the features:

• The user liked having a second screen option menu that allowed them to interact more deeply with the app.
  
• They liked having a separate screen for typing because it actually makes the typing experience more pleasant and less crowded.
• The user believes that being able to record the number of repetitions in a set is helpful for them to keep track of their workout so that they can focus on their exercises.
• They liked how the application was designed not for a phone, but for the watch. It was obvious and intuitive how to interact with it. They liked being able to close and open the second screen when needed.
• When transitioning from the second screen to the single screen, the top screen would always become the main display and that consistency made it easier for the user to understand what he would be seeing when he closed the second screen.

Part 5: A Wild Future For the Fit Watch

The fit watch is promising with its double screen capabilities, but it still needs to test how to enhance the user's experience by taking advantage of the full screen. The second screen offers a lot of promise, but also presents many challenges. Applications need to be designed to allow interaction with both single and double screen modes. It needs to be intuitive and each screen should be well defined for the user so that they don't have to figure it out themselves. User interaction with the prototypes made it obvious all these promises and challenges. Designers designing for this smart watch need to study the user experience on both the single and double screen. It is wild territory, but it offers a lot of promise!