Design 01 - Watches in the Wild!

Interviews

In advance of beginning my interviews, I had a feeling I wanted to create an application for checking sports scores on the go. So, taking advantage of the Cal vs Sacramento game this past Saturday, I spoke to alumni and other Cal fans who were attending the same tailgate as me about their sports scores viewing habits. I spoke briefly to a few and chose to further interview the two who seemed like they would give useful information. 

Interview 1

This person was a 35-year old computer scientist. He is an alumnus of UC Berkeley, returning to Cal to watch the football game against Sacramento State. He currently has an iPhone. He frequently uses his iPhone to check the scores of Cal football games, as well as other sporting events, while they are occurring if he is not able to actively watch the game (he is at dinner, he is at another sporting event, etc.). This requires him to pull out his phone, unlock it, load the application, and refresh to see the current score. He generally does not mind doing this, but he recognizes that it would be easier and less interrupting if the information was available on his wrist, with updates alerting him when one of the teams he was following scored. He did joke, however, that if he checked it on his smart watch instead of going on his phone he would look less busy and have less of a reason to escape potential conversations. He is familiar with the idea of smart watches in general and thought that, if he owned a smart watch and an app such as this existed, he would probably give it a try. 

Interview 2

This person was a 55-year old civil engineer. He has a son who attends UC Berkeley. He was in the area to visit his son and attend the Cal football game. He is not a huge sports fan, but likes to follow some teams, such as Cal's football team. He only attends or watches games occasionally, but likes to be somewhat up-to-date with team performance and so will sometimes check scores on the ESPN website. He does not normally check scores on his Android smart phone because he generally doesn't like pulling out his phone around others, and interacting with the phone interface generally takes him longer than using his computer, which he is more comfortable with. He was only vaguely familiar with the concept of a smart watch, but was interested in the idea when I explained. His main concern was wondering how easy it would be to read and interact with the small screen.

General Conclusions

I have always thought of a smart watch as a way to do the same things you would on your phone, but in a more unobtrusive manner. This is where my thought to have sports scores available directly on your wrist came from; I have many friends who will be frequently checking their phone whenever a game is on that they care about so that they can keep up to date on the game's progress. Both of the people I interviewed were somewhat interested in the idea of being able to view scores without the distraction of pulling a phone out of their pocket (which is where both interviewees stored their phone), especially when actually viewing the score only takes a few seconds--making it seem hardly worthwhile to take the phone out, unlock it, etc. One point that was mentioned by both interviewees is that the information would need to be easy to see at a glance even though the screen is small, so everything would need to be displaying very prominently--no squinting to view small text. I think this shouldn't be a problem for a sports scores app; all that needs to be displayed are the teams' logos and scores.

Note...  

You will notice I do not have pictures of these interviewees. Unfortunately, later in the day after conducting the interviews, my phone fell off of a second-story balcony and... well, is quite unusable. I have been unable to retrieve the pictures in the mean time. Whoops... (To instructors, I'm not asking to get the credit for pictures, just wanted to explain what happened. Entirely my fault.)

Brainstorm

1. ESPN type app to view current sports game scores - many people like to be able to follow the score of sports games even if they're not watching them, which often results in them frequently checking their phones during the time of the game. Scores displayed on a smart watch would be a great use since they require very little screen space and can be easily and discretely checked frequently
   
2. Weather forecast for the rest of the day / current weather outside
   
3. Calendar event notifications -> button to open maps to navigate to the location
   
4. Reminder when you reach a location right on your wrist
   
5. At a restaurant: display common/favorite items from that restaurant, pulled e.g. from Yelp. Eliminates the need to pull out your phone at a table to see similar information, which may be considered rude
   
6. Take down quick voice reminders / notes to remember later, could be combined with above idea of reminders when you reach a location
   
7. RSS Feed - delete or save for later. Quick thing to do when you're waiting e.g. in line or for a bus. Do some filtering, pick out headlines that look interesting to read later vs. remove from the potential list (e.g. swipe right or left)
   
8. Yo for smart watch - The Yo app doesn't make a lot of sense on smart phones, in my opinion, but it could work well on smart watches. On a smart watch, typing is very difficult, but you may still want to give someone a quick heads up e.g. that you're on your way... So you could just select their name from a quick list of frequent contacts without the need to type a message
   
9. Chromecast controls - Kind of a small market, since it only applies to people with Chromecast, but being able to control your chromecast (at minimum, play/pause/etc., at most, choosing content to play) from a watch would be very convenient. This idea is extensible to other types of remotes as well.
   
10. Recipe / Cooking App - Screen would display one step of a recipe, you could just tap the screen to move onto the next step (or flick your wrist somehow)
    
11. Calculator for quick / simple calculations - would just display a simple numpad, input one number, an operation, then another number, and the result displays. Option to clear and start over or use that result and do another operation. Could be good e.g. at a grocery store looking at total price for multiple items, splitting a check at a restaurant, calculating tip, etc. Similar to the old idea of calculators on watches but should be a lot more usable on a smart watch, and certainly much less ugly (no need for buttons for each number)
    
12. GPS application showing speed / distance covered for running/cycling, probably other statistics and logging

Prototype

As you can probably guess from my interviews, I chose the sports scores application. I chose this because I think it's applicable to a wide variety of people, and doesn't generally require a great deal of user input, so it would probably work well for the small screen format of the smart watch. 

The application is designed around a "home screen" showing all of the sports games that you are currently following. The initial design contains a 2x2 grid of 4 games, each displaying a logo from one of the teams involved in that game. Empty squares of the grid contain a (+). When tapped, you are taken to a screen where you can see a list of upcoming sporting games which you can add to your home screen. Tapping on one of the games in the list takes you to a page with slightly more information about the game, such as the start time and location. At the bottom of this screen is a button you can tap to finalize adding it to your home screen. Doing this takes you back to your home screen. Tapping and holding on one of the home screen icons puts the home screen into "edit" mode, similar to the iPhone home screen, where each game has a close button and they can be dragged to rearrange. If enough games are added that the 2x2 grid is enough, you can swipe to the left to get to a second page with another 2x2 grid (as you would with an Android/iPhone home screen). Tapping on one of the icons at the home screen will take you to a details page about that game, with the current score. There is also a delete button at the bottom to remove that game from your home screen. 

There is also a "notification" screen which appears on your watch when, for example, a touchdown is made in a game that you have added to your homescreen. This would display a very simple text about the event (e.g. "Touchdown!") and the current score. Tapping this screen would again take you to the details page. 

The prototype itself is made from cardboard cut into the shape of a watch. A rudimentary "screen" was created by adding a second piece of cardboard over the face with the "screen" area cut out, and covered with tape. Sample screens can then be slid in and out of the top of the prototype. 

Feedback

I demonstrated my prototype to two people I know who are avid sports fans, whom I know frequently check sports scores. One is currently an iPhone user, one is currently an Android phone user.

General Points of Feedback from Both Test Runs 

• Two glaring issues arose very early. From the "details" page, after tapping on a game from the home screen, there is no way to return to the home screen except for deleting the game. A similar, less serious issue appears when attempting to add a game; there is no way to return back. There would likely need to be some sort of button on every page that allows you to go back.
  
• If they were to only have one game they were watching at a time (which is common), having the grid displaying three empty (+) marks to add new games would probably be a little annoying. Perhaps the application could resize the size of the grid based on the number of games currently being followed, e.g. if you're only following one game that takes up the whole screen, if you're following two it splits the screen in half, and so on. This idea was received well.
  
• The interface of tapping and holding to put all of the icons into edit mode was unintuitive to the Android user, but intuitive to the iPhone user. This is unsurprising since I am an iPhone user and I designed it using what is more natural to me. The end result should probably be similar to the typical system Android uses for rearranging icons if built on an Android platform, or similar to the iPhone system if built on an iOS platform. Perhaps, though, this system won't be necessary at all anymore, due to the discussion in the previous point of feedback.
  
• There should be more information than just a score when you tap on a particular game. For example, amount of time remaining in the game along with what quarter/half/inning/etc. it is. After the game ends, we discussed the possibility of displaying information about the team's future--for example, what teams they are playing next and when.
  
• The paging is probably unnecessary, as they wouldn't be following more than 4 games simultaneously. This is actually probably a good thing, because the paging system was deemed largely unintuitive.
  
• There should be a way to subscribe to teams so that you don't have to go through and add each of their games separately. The game would automatically show up in the grid view of followed games, and (depending on your preferences as discussed below) you could automatically begin receiving notifications. This would greatly streamline the whole process, eliminating the need to add a game every time it is starting. Plus, this would enable you to get notifications when a game is beginning, so even if you've forgotten your friendly smart watch app will remind you! 
  
• They liked that they would get a notification e.g. if a team made a touchdown, but think that there would definitely need to be a lot of customization options for this. For example in basketball, you probably don't want to be notified about every point. And if you have a few games you're somewhat keeping an eye on, you might want to only receive notifications for one of them. On a related note, the list of upcoming games would likely be cumbersome for the small screen if you couldn't at least filter by sport or something similar.
  
• If there's only one team logo displayed on the grid view, how do you decide which one should be displayed? One interesting thought to solve this would be to display whichever one is currently winning, enabling you to see, for all of your games, which team is currently in the lead. My testers were interested in that idea but unsure how well it would work in practice, and I agree. It would also probably be possible to simplify have the user select, perhaps when they are first adding the game.
  
• Current design shows the application name ("SPORTS" placeholder) at the top of every grid view, which is probably unnecessary and could possibly hold more useful information or just make everything else larger.
  
• We discussed possible features to include in the application that would be useful while at a given sporting game as well, perhaps to provide more information to the watcher. We couldn't think of anything that wouldn't normally be displayed on the score board already. 
  
• There should probably also be a section for viewing the scores of games that have passed