We have to design three screens for a smartwatch app.
It is worth 10% of the semester.
Before our first class we were sent an email from Kyle that gave us some work to do shown here
So here is my analysis:
Firstly I went on Pinterest to just browse some smartwatch apps, as it’s something I’m not very well versed in.
My first thoughts through looking the sea of smartwatch apps was: why is everything in dark mode? I feel as if I made my app a brighter colour it would stick out so that is my initial thought, they all use a feature of a smart watch which of course it will so I guess I’m just wondering what I should do with mine.
I then looked at the apps I have on my old Apple Watch SE, and choose 3 worth talking about these were
So below I’m going to go through each one and cover each point
The Apple watch has a workout app which monitors your different workouts
The key features of the workout app are heart rate monitoring, recording workouts, stopwatch, time tracking, calorie counting and a music player. Some unique features of the app is the sync to iPhone, so it records your workouts and rings and sends it to your fitness app on your iPhone so you can see the statistics of your workouts, it updates every 15 minutes for your step count and does real time tracking of your workout, as for general patches the workout app is part of the core apple watch system so it updates when the watch updates, so about every month or so.
The Ui follows the typical apple watch design of dark mode, right greens, blues and yellows, it was designed this way to allow for more accessibility for users, as the watch is a small screen, it tries to make up for the design for having a large text size and large icons that can be easily pressed by your pointer finger, it also has the time on the top right as it’s also meant to be a watch so it needs to tell the time. The UX is the accessibility and mini features of the app, so I’ve talked about the size of icons and fonts that are easier to see and press but there are also functions for the user, so the workout app has multiple workouts, one that comes to mind is swimming, and of course water can get into your device and destroy it, but with the swimming workout it activates the watches water lock feature which prevents water getting into the system. another UX feature is the statistics that sync to the fitness app, allowing the user to see the stats of their workout, so a walk for example, it’ll show the brief statistics of the walk on the watch and it’ll send it to the users phone
The design is simple, Helvetica Font, dark mode, bright colours, it’s almost similar of the new York subway design
There are subtle approaches to the UX through the UI like the text hierarchy in the outdoor run time, showing the most important which time then the statistics of the exercise.
Spotify have a watch app that allows for the user to control their music on the go while they listen
Key features of the app are music player, liking songs, queue, bluetooth (allowing to change devices to which Spotify is played from.
Some Unique features of the app are being able to swipe your finger to see your library as well as your recently played, I’ve looked into the update part and it appears as though the updates are in sync with the apps updates, The user experience is handy allowing you to easily change, pause play songs, I’d say with experience using the app the icons are a little too small sometimes to press so that can be an inconvenience, the design follows Spotify's design with the icons and colour scheme, where as interestingly the font doesn’t follow the original font that Spotify uses
Outlook is the Email service created by Microsoft allowing users to check their emails some key features are view and reply to emails with dictation/quick replies. Calendar, Notifications for mail and meetings, Some unique features are the calendar complications on the watch face. Quick replies by voice responses.
There are regular updates for stability and OS compatibility,
The UI is minimal with the design mainly being based on iPhone, the navigation is simple and glance-focused.
Outlook, Spotify, and Apple’s Workout app on the Apple Watch all follow a common design practice that is based on glanceability and quick, light interactions. Each app shows the most relevant information at a glance these could be emails in Outlook, music in Spotify, and your workout stats in Workout while relying heavily on notifications to keep users engaged.
In class we did some exercises like an alogical connection which is trying to find a link or relationship that lacks a basis in reason, logic, or evidence.
Below was my attempt, I decided to combine Doctors and Blog, essentially I came up with a notion for Doctors that would use voice prompts to write down quick notes, bit boring but would be practical and efficient in my opinion.
But it just seems a little safe, maybe boring, of course it would work, but I wanted something more experimental and more life optimising rather than just limiting to Doctors, why not everyones life becomes more optimised
So I came up with an idea of just having an AI on your smartwatch, It could help you on the go, by speaking to your watch, linking to your phone. So say you go to your watch and say the ai’s name.” set a reminder at 18.00 to take the bins out, it’ll speak to you via the watch and in the background it’ll update and send it to the phone.
I want the watch to have a name similar to Iron Man’s J.A.R.V.I.S which is a name but also an acronym for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. I want that as it’s fun and adds some personality, I’m essentially creating a Jarvis but for a smartwatch, So I just wrote down some names and tried to make them an acronym
Jane - Just an new e-bot
Eve - Enhanced Virtual Entity
Mac - Machine AI Chat
Dean - Digital Everyday Assistant for Needs
Milo - Machine Intelligence (for) Life Optimisation