FIRST INTERVIEW: 35 year old office manager & pregnant mother of two
Main Observations
The first person I spoke to is a 35 year old office manager, mother of two, and pregnant with her third child. I learned many lessons from her after our discussion on the potential of a wearable making a change in her life. I probed her with tons of questions about her daily life, making sure to keep the concept of wearables in mind, so that I could let her pains, desires, and their corresponding wearables solutions come up naturally.
As a pregnant woman, there are many new things that she had to remember to do and keep track of. She uses many apps on her phone that are related to her femininity and her pregnancy. She uses a period tracker to keep track of when her period is expected to come, and the various symptoms she is expected to feel, such as bloating. As someone who is due in 5 months, she often checks the days until her due date, and likes to receive small reminders about her child such as how big the baby has become. She has also been recommended by her doctor to do kegel exercises every day so would benefit from having reminders to do that. She imagined receiving reminders like these which truly concerned her appear straight on a wearable.
She uses a pedometer that is clipped to her jeans. She wishes it would automatically connect with her phone and track her steps daily. Through further discussion, we came to discover her main goal was to track calories burned throughout the day, as she has a goal value. A wearable with the right sensors would be able to track calories burned throughout her day through distance walked. She spoke of a desire to be alerted toward the end of the day (before it gets dark) that if she had not met her calorie goal for the day, she should go out and take a walk.
She expressed concern for other aspects of her health, such as food, medication, and water intake. As a pregnant woman, she is even more concerned about this. She wants reminders to drink water on a regular basis. She takes thyroid and pre-natal pills, and there is a specific way they should be consumed in terms of time of the day and whether they should be taken with or without food. When asked to visualize this, she imagined a reminders system that told her how she she fit her pills and food into her day. She would want something like “Good morning, take your thyroid pill and I will tell you when you can have breakfast… It’s been half an hour, you are free to eat breakfast… It’s 8PM so it’s time for your pre-natal pill!” She spoke of this providing huge value to her father, who has to take over 10 pills every day for various reasons. A pill would help to move some of that cognitive stress elsewhere.
She spoke about her recent trip to Hong Kong and how she found the Octopus card very convenient (a card that you can not only use with all forms of public transit, but also in stores). She then exclaimed that it would be convenient to be able to pay with everything using a watch, by scanning it against a machine. She would want to keep a certain balance in the watch rather than linking it directly to an account of hers because she fears for the potential of security leaks.
She spoke about how she can sometimes misplace things like her phone and keys. She would like to be able to click a button on her watch or command her watch to tell her where her misplaced things are. She would want to tell her iPhone to start beeping, so that she can more easily find it in her home.
As a working woman, she does not check her texts often. However, some texts are more important than others. Her kids are both in middle school and she is signed up to receive text messages from her school with reminders for her kids to bring their PE gear or to receive a form that is being sent home. She would like important messages like these to show up directly on a wearable as they come.
Lessons Learned
I learned many lessons from this interview. They helped me to determine a large and creative set of features and they will be discussed below. On a broader level, one thing this interview taught me is that this smart watch (at least from my analysis) will serve as a life companion in an extremely intimate way, even more so than the iPhone does. The immediacy and closeness of the watch is reflected in the personal importance of the use cases that were put forth by my interviewee — they were largely related to health (pregnancy, calories, food intake, medication); about the most important pieces of communication, such as text messages and important emails; and concerning activities we do the most often such as paying for everything we consume. I also learned that it’s important to talk about daily activities and habits in the guise of the smart watch, so that the interviewee can begin to think up more annoyances in their daily lives and whether a watch would be the ideal way to solve it.
SECOND INTERVIEW: 23 year old Bay Area Product Manager
Main Observations
The second person I spoke to is a 23 year old working as a Product Manager at Facebook. I asked her very open ended questions and she provided a variety of responses that pointed to highly specific use cases for the smart watch.
She often has notes in Evernote that she would like to reference on the go such as her grocery list, and spoke about how putting those directly within a smart watch for her to finger through when needed would be very convenient.
On the flip side, ideas sometimes pop into her head about tasks she needs to complete, such as paying off her credit card. She would normally have to take her phone out of her pocket, unlock it, open up Reminders, and type it in. She expressed how if it were a short to-do, she would like to be able to say that to-do into the watch, and have the watch save it for future use.
Some of her hobbies include rock climbing and biking. She says that for activities like these, she keeps her phone in her pocket or in a locker and always feels a bit on edge in case she misses something important. She says that in these cases, a smart watch would definitely help to put her at ease. She’d like to know of any important notifications that could happen, such as phone calls, texts from important sources, and important emails. Also, when biking, she would find it very convenient to have turn by turn directions if she was traveling to somewhere new. The directions would ideally be card style with pop ups whenever a turn must happen.
Lessons Learned
I learned many lessons from this interview as well. From this interviewee, I gathered that she had a very utilitarian perspective on the uses of a smart watch. The ideas that came out of her were very much to help her achieve her broader goals in a more convenient way, like helping to leaf through her to do lists, write down new reminders, or get directions to places. They were less personal. They definitely complemented the more action oriented lifestyle of a young urban professional in a time intensive role. It helped me to see that there is a large variety of ways people will use and see a smart watch, just like any technology. It’s important to speak to as many people as possible in different age groups, genders, areas, and socioeconomic levels to determine who your target audience really is and to determine the full potential for the watch. One big thing I also learned was input into the watch was a big concern for her (and likely many people). She said she would feel awkward if she had to always speak into the watch and would appreciate a less attention grabbing method of input, while also not being too strenuous to input things.
Similarities
There were some similarities that I noticed between the responses of the two interviewees. I definitely noticed that it was important for them to receive only the most important notifications on their smart watches. It implies that many users have a hierarchy for notifications, where some are very important while others are passable. That line is something that should be examined further in order to determine the optimum implementation, and also to question and possibly iterate on the notification systems for existing smart phones.
TWELVE FEATURES
My interviews gave me many ideas for smart watch features.
- Pregnancy companion, where you can enter in due date, be reminded for things such as daily kegel exercises, and track baby kicks and contractions toward end of pregnancy
- Calorie coach, where you can be notified if you have not met a target for calories burned toward the end of the day, but leave enough time to go out for a workout to make up for it
- Medication schedule and reminder system, where you can enter in the medications you are required to take, the number of doses per day, and their constraints with other foods
- Food intake companion, reminding the wearer to have a drink of water regularly, and to ensure adequate consumption of foods the wearer often misses, like vegetables and fruits
- A Clipper card but applied to anything that can be purchased, allowing you to scan your watch to take public transit, purchase things, and eat at restaurants
- A location notifier that will notify businesses that I have arrived for things like reservations, grabbing take out food ordered over the phone, and going to places for appointments
- A convenient ‘Find my iPhone’ feature that will help to either locate the iPhone if it is far away, or have the iPhone emit a beep if it is within one’s vicinity
- A notifier of important pieces of communication, such as texts, important emails, and phone calls
- A viewer of important notes previously constructed, such as to-do lists or grocery lists, for on the go purposes
- A quick reminders scheduler for brief, yet stressful reminders that pop into the head
- A turn by turn directions notifier for journeys where taking out the phone for directions is close to impractical, like on a bike ride
- A networking tool with functionality to quickly exchange contact information
IDEA TO PROTOTYPE
My favorite idea is my fifth one: a way to easily pay for anything, whether it be to a friend, on public transit, at a restaurant, and at a store, and I chose it because I believe it will be a fun and challenging interaction to get right, and I believe it is a disruptive feature that has the potential to really change the way people pay for things. Related, perhaps the concept of tickets can also be added so that tickets can be scanned through a smart watch and physical tickets won’t be necessary. I also like it because there is no one group that benefits from this -- everyone pays for things, so it's a feature for everyone.
ABOUT THE PROTOTYPE
My low fidelity prototype is shown. Different stickies are shown for different screens in the interaction. My screens show three different interactions. The first set showed a series of interactions for making a smart watch payment at Safeway. The watch would be scanned to a Safeway sensor, after which the wearer would be asked if they were sure they wanted to pay the amount. If they clicked yes, they would have to touch their fingerprint to the screen; if the fingerprint worked, then they would be brought to a confirmation page. The second interaction is using the smart watch as a Clipper card. It works the same as a Clipper card and I demonstrated this using a BART scenario. Every time it is scanned, a message on the screen would appear with the station name, balance, and cost (if leaving BART). The third interaction is a Passbook feature where you would be able to select your ticket from your list of tickets in Passbook and present the ticket on the watch to the ticket checker for validation.
USER TESTING
I had a friend of mine take a look at the design and share their thoughts. Below are some of the thoughts I gathered from his reaction. After describing these, I discuss the things learned in the last section.
At first glance, he said right away that the buttons I had drawn were too small and that I was trying to cram too much text onto the screen. It was something I had not even thought of as being an issue but became obvious immediately after he brought it up. I had forgotten that the watch is such a small device, so buttons and text must be optimized for this.
As he “used” the prototype, he made a few small usability comments. On the security screen during payment, he liked the fact that a fingerprint scan was there because it made the experience feel more secure. However, he added that he would appreciate a Back or Cancel button just in case he realized he did not want to go through with the transaction entirely. In several areas, he mentioned that instead of having an OK button to confirm something that is read, it would be even better to have a confirmation statement appear for a few seconds before going away. He also mentioned that if there was a lot of text in the alert messages, the most important information should be highlighted or emphasized.
When viewing the tickets page, he felt there was definitely a convenience factor to having tickets on the wrist. He suggested re-wording the sections to make it more obvious that the watch was in “Tickets” mode, and re-word the sections to make it obvious which tickets were the ones appropriate for the current time and location, and which were tickets for a different time. He also seemed to stumble in understanding that the watch was in Passbook state, confusing Passbook state with the ticket I had shown on the following screen, a clear error in providing contextual clues.
Because all my stickies assumed one way orientation, he brought up the issue of changing orientation modes. Should they also be in one orientation or should they change based on the watches level? It’s a new issue to consider that I did not previously think of. There should be some cases where orientation does not change, but some where it is free to change. For example, when scanning a Passbook ticket, it should be free to change so that the ticket checker can scan appropriately without having to crowd into the wearer’s personal space.
INSIGHTS FOR NEXT ITERATION
From these reactions, I have come to a list of insights to keep in mind in the next iteration:
- Maximize readability — keep information extremely brief and to the point; no need to include verbs/phrases if the user will be able to interpret information as it stands, e.g. instead of “swiped out of BART at Berkeley”, just say “Berkeley"
- Maximize usability — buttons should be large and such that mistakes should not be made
- Predict everything users may need, however small (down to navigating back, or canceling a process) and ensure that if it’s an important need, that it is accounted for
- Minimize clicks as much as possible, especially because the screen of the watch will be decidedly more difficult to physically touch/navigate
- Emphasize the most important information that is shown, especially if it is surrounded by other text.; people are going to be glancing at their watches quickly and not necessarily for an extended period of time, so it’s important that the most crucial information is conveyed first
- Because there is so little space for words, make sure the words are strong words that convey the appropriate meaning in an intuitive way (e.g., “Upcoming" not only conveys a sense that this section includes the most relevant tickets to the current time, but also that the tickets are sorted in order of what is soonest, as opposed to using the word “Today” which is a less flexible term to use)
- Make it obvious what ‘state’ the watch is in — given the small size of the watch and the inevitable new, previously unseen method of navigation, it is very important to give the user clues into what state they are in at the time, where they can go from that state, and how they can get out of that state
- Consider where it is appropriate and inappropriate to allow screen orientation to change — there are some cases where it should definitely stay in one orientation, but some where it is much more convenient if it can change
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