DESIGN 01: Watches in the Wild

Part 1

Interviewed:

Manager of student employees at Student Affairs IT at UC Berkeley

• She tends to get calls while walking in between meetings and/or having conversations, and her phone is often at the bottom of her bag
• It is easier to subtly ignore a call on a watch by swiping or pressing some button than to pull out a phone and ignore a call - leads to less awkward situations
• It would be nice to be able to send automatic messages on the watch
• Let the watch do more (e.g. GPS location tracker, which would display popup notifications of a store nearby that you would like)

25 year old parking garage worker in Downtown Berkeley

• Encounters frustrations when wanting to switch music that is playing on his phone while driving (or just to play music) -> can't keep eyes on road, phone sometimes drops into cracks
• Multitasking with a phone is tough (driving and using your phone is dangerous even!)
• There should be an easy way to just switch between/shuffle songs
• The idea of a small screen on a wrist still turns people off - smartwatch apps may always have to be inevitably linked to a phone somehow, won't ever be the same as a full phone app

Part 2:

Brainstorming:

1. App that allows you to send a bunch of automatic text messages that are set on your phone when you receive a call or text, simply swipe right or left for different messages.
2. App that relies on voice commands to play music/ignore calls
   1. When getting a call, you say “Answer”, “Automatic message”, or “Ignore"

3. Smartwatch app that copies your phone screen -> displays what is literally on your phone screen right now, and they are synced
   1. Scale the phone app to ergonomically fit on a smartwatch screen

4. Smartwatch app that you can directly control your phone on (swipe right to go to this app, swipe left to go to that app)
   1. For text messaging, you can just swipe right to answer, swipe left to leave an automatic message, or swipe down to ignore

5. Smartwatch app that shows you what is interesting (based off your personal preferences) in a specific direction that you are walking in (or nearby), can be turned on and off, can be shared with other people via text
6. Smartwatch app that allows you to share what kind of music you’re listening to with friends
7. Smartwatch app that senses that you’re in a car, syncs with car, and starts shuffling and playing music.
   1. Can also swipe to go to next song

8. App that allows you to take a call while sending another person a text message
9. App that senses when you are in a car, and will automatically update all contacts’ phones or smartwatch apps to reflect that you’re busy
10. App that allows you set a time in which you’re busy, and then, if messages/calls are missed, automatically set reminders to respond them
11. Text messages show up on the two leather/plastic straps of the watch, while the watch has the time listed or music playing -> CHOSE THIS IDEA
12. App that sends phone calls meant for one phone to another (this scenario plays out when your friend calls, but you’re driving, so you send the call to the other people in the car)

Favorite Idea and Why I chose It:

I decided to choose the app that displays notifications (calls, text messages) on the straps of the watch and time and music playing on your phone

• You can play different kinds of music on your phone just by swiping up and down for songs in a playlist, and swiping left and right for different playlists
• Text message feature: When a text message is received, it is displayed on the wrist straps
  • You can reply by hitting reply or ignore (also on the wrist straps), then use your watch interface to send an automatic text back (these automatic text messages can be set on your phone)

• Music feature: Press the screen to play music
  • To switch playlists, swipe left and right
  • To switch songs within a playlist, swipe up and down

• You can receive text messages while music is playing, and it wouldn’t disrupt the interface on the watch (since it’s on the straps) UNTIL you decide to reply.

I decided to choose this because

• It solves both of the problems that the interviewees had with their phones
• It allows you to quickly glance at your wrist to see text messages or play music without having to pull out a phone, or without taking your eyes fully off the road when driving
• It seemed nice to be able to utilize the straps of the watch for some sort of user interface, rather than just relying on that small circle or rectangle on the wrist

Feedback notes - Talked to a 55 year old cafe barista (no permission to take photo)

• The fact that the text message reply is not on the straps but on the screen, while the text message itself (and the reply/ignore buttons) are on the straps, is slightly confusing and troublesome (you’d have to turn your wrist)
  
• The message sending is a bit restricting (fat-finger problem?), not enough types of messages
• The music app is great, slightly unintuitive in terms of switching between playlists and IN playlists, also not intuitive that these songs/playlists are coming from your phone/playing on your phone
• Need to switch through tons of different songs - still time consuming and potentially dangerous (especially if only shuffled)

Insights for future revision/design

• Think about how to create better discoverability and understandability with the watch straps also being an interface that directly affects what's on the watch screen
• Need to have some better signifiers as to what exactly to do on the watch when playing music (what swipe means what)
• Increase the functionality of the automatic text messages (swipe for more? voice commands to add one automatically?)
• Instead of having all the text messages in their own line, maybe have them each in a box to avoid the fat-finger problem
• Figure out how to sort the songs in a way that makes sense to the user (by number of times they listen to it? by alphabet?)