Design 01: Watches in the Wild World of Retail

Interviews in the Wild

Interview 1 : Construction Worker

I saw one of the Soda Hall construction workers with a phone hanging on a lanyard around his neck and realized he would be the perfect candidate to interview. He told me about how he always has to use his phone to look up drawings or pictures for the pieces he is putting together. One idea I got from talking to him was to have zoomed in pictures of the construction piece he is working on appear on the watch so he could focus on that area without having to move his hands to pull out his phone. Additionally, he has to drive to many new places and said he would want map directions with simple arrows to indicate the next turns so he could just glance at his wrist, which is already on the steering wheel, rather than have to look away to see what the next turn is. Unfortunately, he did not allow me to take a picture but I still appreciated his insight.

Interview 2: Camerawoman

When walking home from class, I saw an NBC news van and approached the camerawoman who had been filming the newscaster. She said that just 30 minutes ago she had wished she had her phone on her but had to leave it in the van to charge. Her boss had been sending her updates about the next news to cover and the different locations she had to go to next. If this information would pop up on her wrist instead, she thinks it would be helpful so that she could stay updated but still stay behind the camera while the newscaster is speaking. Having text messages appear on your wrist seems to be the most common feature people think about.

Interview 3: Newscaster

Because the camerawoman said that she only uses a smartphone because of work and otherwise has a "dumb phone," she pointed me to the newscaster who was addicted to his smartphone. When I asked him about a time that he didn't have his phone on him but needed it for something, he responded by saying that was never the case and he always had his phone with him. He said he checked for updates whenever he was not on the air, but that one very useful thing for him would be to have breaking news updates come to him immediately. If he was about to report an event that just got updated, it would be very convenient to see that update on his wrist and avoid reporting old information. This also made me think about how any type of crucial alert would be helpful to many users, such as natural disaster alerts or Amber alerts for missing children.

Interview 4: Yelp-lover

When eating at a restaurant in downtown Berkeley, I started talking to a woman who said she always wants to use her phone to access Yelp so that she can see what the best food places nearby are. One idea was to have nearby restaurants appear as suggestions one at a time on her wrist, with tilt motions that would affect how close by she was looking for places. This made me think about how it would be cool if your watch alerted you that there is a five-star dessert place only a few feet ahead of you, so that you don't miss it and regret not Yelping the surrounding area beforehand.

She also said that she tends to find parking a bit further from what her destination is, so if the watch could detect that she had just come out of a moving vehicle and was using her smartphone for directions to a particular place, the watch should have big arrows indicating the direction she needs to walk from her parking spot to the actual location she was trying to get to. I thought this was a pretty neat idea because many times, especially in downtown, parking is hard to find directly in front of the restaurant, movie theater, or any place we are going to. Having a watch tell you which direction to head in is very helpful so that you don't have to pull out your phone for maps again to see which way to walk.

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Interview 5: Street Vendor

The first four people I interviewed were just some interesting people I ran into when out and about, but my original goal had been to interview some of the street vendors on Telegraph. I was hoping someone who does henna designs might have similar input about wanting to have zoomed in images on a watch to help while drawing the design. However, this street vendor did not mention that at all, because frankly the paper designs from his book were the best thing to use, but he did mention how he only uses a smartphone to accept credit cards with the Square app. He said that he has a pay-per-use phone and only turns on data for the times people only have credit cards to buy his merchandise, and he suggested that I create a watch with a headphone jack so that he could insert the Square card reader. He added that he would like to listen to music from the watch as well, and then went on to talk about how engineers are not very good at designing things for the average user because they only design for themselves. It was interesting to hear such insight from him because I think this class challenges us to think broader, which is exactly what he was saying.

Talking to him about the Square payments made me realize that payments would actually be a very useful thing to have on a watch, especially if we could have credit cards with NFC or RFID chips that could scan onto the watch and conduct a payment. I also thought about how the average person, not a vendor, might use such a watch and came up with the idea of having a barcode scanner on it so that the person could check prices on items without having to use the store scanners or wait for a sales associate to help out. 

Interview 6: Medical Physician

The last interview I conducted was with a physician (who would not allow me to take a picture) and her suggestions were features that would give details about medical pharmaceuticals. She mentioned wanting to look up the ingredients in a particular drug, as well as the nearest pharmacy it was located at, the symptoms and side effects it could cause, and the normal dosage. I think this would be very helpful for physicians, especially if the smart watch had a voice feature where the person would simply say the name of the drug and have quick facts pop up about it. The physician could also say some symptoms and the watch could respond with possible medicines, but I think that puts too much power into the watch and a patient sitting nearby may be a bit less comfortable with that. Since physicians are well-qualified and should know roughly which drugs to prescribe, the watch might be more helpful as just a tool to see which of three possible drugs would be the best given the allergic reactions the patient is known to have to certain ingredients.

Brainstorming Ideas

• When your phone is mapping directions, the wrist watch has simple arrows left and right to tell you at a mere glance what the next direction is, which is helpful while driving, so that you can just glance at your wrist on the steering wheel, rather than have to look away from it.
  
• Zoomed in image on the watch will show you exactly what pieces need to be welded together for a construction worker.
  
• Zoomed in image on the watch will show the particular design portion of a tattoo that the tattoo artist is working on
  
• Once the watch is out of a moving vehicle that was using maps to get to a destination, the watch will contain arrows pointing in which direction to walk from the parking spot to the actual location the person was routing to originally.
  
• With Yelp mode on the watch, various restaurants and close by attractions will pop up as the user moves around the city so that there are new places to try and the ratings for them are right on the wrist. For example, if there is a five-star bakery coming up a few yards from you in the direction you are walking, you could get an alert that tells you to try out the bakery.
  
• For a newscaster or journalist, when there is any breaking news or change in the news story, an update will pop up on the wrist watch, so that even while reporting, the newscaster is able to give the most up to date reports.
  
• Text messages appearing on the watch, with a setting that allows for only messages from particularly important people to surface, such as a camerawoman's boss telling her that the next story needs to be covered in 15 minutes.
  
• Calendar updates for events that will be happening soon, as well as alerts when you try to schedule something for a time that already has an event.
  
• To do list or grocery list easy access on a watch, which is useful when you are out running errands and have your hands full but need to check what is left on your list.
  
• Headphone jack in the watch to listen to music and also to use the Square credit card reader, perfect for street vendors who have just now started adopting pay-per-use smartphones for the purpose of being able to accept credit cards.
  
• Barcode scanning wrist interface for both consumers and retailers. The consumers would be able to check prices of an item on their own, and see price comparisons for name-brand vs. non-brand items within the same store, and comparisons of prices among nearby stores (within walking distance). The retailers would similarly be able to scan barcodes for prices if customers ask, and they would be able to have sales on the go, with a "pay now" option and NFC/RFID technology that would allow for credit cards to just tap the watch interface in order to make the payment.
  
• Reminder alerts for store employees to know when to take their breaks, gather for a meeting, switch shifts, or walk around to engage more with customers.
  
• Medical information such as the drug ingredients in pharmaceuticals, for physicians to know whether it is appropriate to give the patient that medicine. Additionally, the dosage amounts and side effects could also show up for the pharmaceutical in question.
  
• Barcode scanner that would help you budget the amount you spend in a grocery store, by tallying up the prices of everything you put in your cart (scan item before placing in cart), so that you don't spend more than the amount of money you have, and can avoid the awkward situation at the register.

Prototyping

Chosen Idea: Barcode scanner and payment watch

I was very inspired by the street vendor on Telegraph to create a payment watch, and once I thought about how regular retail stores and the average consumer could use such a watch, I thought to combine the features into one wild retail watch with barcode scanning and payment capabilities. 

I started out by making some simple drawings and cutting out thin cardboard from an old cake box. I cut an inch-thick band and taped on a white square as my main watch screen. Then, I created the key watch screens I wanted to include, adding drawings and colors to create a more appealing user experience. My prototype watch functioned by taping the band onto the tester's wrist, and then taping on the screens one by one as the tester told me what they would do next given the current screen.

The user starts with the "scan item barcode" interface, which allows for price lookups by a simple tap of the watch and the barcode. The barcode appears briefly and then the screen shows the actual item and its price. If the vendor is using this, the screen asking whether to "charge" the user or not appears, and a voice feature also allows for a custom amount to be spoken, rather than charging only amounts from barcodes, as street vendors might find more convenient. There is also the ability to pay with Square. Then the "tap to pay" screen appears and the customer can simply tap their credit card and then see a "payment successful" screen. 

For the customer using the watch in store, the first screen is still the barcode scanner, but this time the scan results in the picture of the item, its price, and two buttons to indicate direct purchase or price comparison. Direct purchase would lead to the same screens as the retailer, while price comparison would lead to a screen asking to swipe left if the user wants the exact same item in a nearby store, and swipe right if the user wants similar items (different brand) in the same store. Each of these cases leads to a different screen, the former showing a few stores with their prices for the product, and the latter showing non-brand or a different brand of similar items to the originally scanned item, along with their prices. Pushing down or swiping any of those would also lead to a purchasing screen.

User Feedback 1: Retail Sales Associate  

Because the initial idea for my product was for retailers, I stopped by American Apparel and spoke to a sales associate there about my smart watch idea. I showed her the barcode scanner, which she liked since she said many people still ask prices even if price tags are on the items. However, when she saw the swiping option to purchase the item right then and conduct a sales transaction with the customer, she was hesitant. She said that as convenient as it is to conduct a sale right in place when the customer decides that he or she wants to buy the item, having a simple credit card scanner (tap-to-pay idea) is difficult on the store because they need to verify the validity of the credit card as well as the user's identification. For large purchase amounts, signatures are also required and that does not seem viable on a tiny watch, and it is also a bit awkward to sign on someone else's wrist.

User Feedback 2: Street Vendor

I wanted to talk to the same street vendor who initially gave me the payment ideas but unfortunately I did not find him at the time I was searching. Instead, I met another vendor on Telegraph Avenue who was selling hand-made jewelry. When I asked him to try my watch, he saw the barcode portion and said that would be useful for when he sells his paintings at the larger exhibitions he goes to. He saw the screen with "speak amount to charge", which I thought would help for selling on the streets at individual prices, but instead he told me that he would not want to conduct credit card sales on small amounts because of the tax he would have to pay on it, and that it would not be worth it for him. He went on a tangent about the government taxing him for large sales as well, and then started helping a customer, so there was not too much I could get out of this conversation.

User Feedback 3: College Student

Since my prototype has features for both sellers and buyers, I decided to ask my roommate to test out my watch, pretending as if she was grocery shopping. I handed her my watch and asked her about what steps she would take, given the particular screens and options available. The first screen was a barcode scanner so she said that she would check the prices of items she wanted to purchase. When she checked the price of a bag of Cheez-Its, the price popped up as well as two buttons, to either purchase or compare prices. Being a cheap college student, as we all are, she clicked "compare prices" and another menu screen came that asked whether she wanted to compare "similar items in the store" or the exact "same item in a nearby store." She gave me her rationale that if she really wanted Cheez-Its, she would want the same item, so I showed her the screen with the comparison of prices for that item in stores within walking distance. However, she also pointed out that if she was buying this for a class, she wouldn't mind non-brand items and would see similar items in the store. Additionally, she said that if she was in a rush, she would have just hit purchase. By hitting purchase, I showed her the screen that allows for charging a particular amount, which was based on the same interface the retailer used. She mentioned that this gave users too much power to pay without a sales associate nearby, so she suggested that I should change it to be an "add to cart" feature, where the watch would accumulate the prices of all items being added to the cart, so that even before reaching the register, the customer knows how much money she will need to spend, which helps avoid the horrible moment where she realizes she doesn't have enough money to purchase all the groceries she wanted. She also pointed out that it would be cool to set a starting dollar amount as a maximum amount to spend and every scanned item would then decrement the amount left for the consumer to spend.

Key Insights

• People like the convenience of being able to look up prices on their wrist, whether for their own shopping or for helping customers out quickly.
  
• With cash becoming less common, all vendors, including street vendors, are finding ways to accept credit cards, and having a convenient way to pay on a watch simplifies things for them.
• Vendors are still hesitant about the safety of using credit cards on any smart device and would like to have more verification and fraud-detection in place.
• Using a watch to scan a barcode of every item you place in your cart will help keep a running tally of how much money you are about to spend, which is helpful in budgeting. 
• Transactions can now happen anywhere if secure payment on a watch is possible, which makes it very easy for sales associates to help customers quickly and efficiently. 
• Employees would want the watch to have multiple features particular to the store they sell at. One example is for vibration alerts for when to take breaks, head to meetings, or do cleanup checks.
• Simple price comparison for in-store varying brands and nearby stores with the same brand would be quite useful for the most cost-effective shopping trip.

Overall, I think the prototype I build has a few good features but there are many more tweaks necessary to make it the ideal watch to use in a store. The adaptability for vendors and consumers was fun to test out, but it turned out to be more difficult than I first anticipated because the most important functionality for each type of person varies, and fewer smart watch screens than I expected were able to work for both.