Apps revolutionized our use of phones. Small screens require a different interaction paradigm from the web. Apps that successfully leveraged the mobile form factor exploded in use as phones became easily accessible in our daily lives.
Apple Watch makes a comparable leap in bringing wearables to the mainstream. A successful watch app will be one that adapts and excels in this tiny form factor while tackling similar development challenges. Screen space is limited, user input is constrained and interactions are basic, all while being tethered to your phone.
First question to ask is whether a Watch app is the right addition to your product. If you answer yes to any of the questions below, then it may make sense to consider building one.
● Does your iPhone app have a tiny screen’s worth of useful information with basic interactions? e.g. invitation with accept, user to follow or photo to favorite.
● Do users check your iPhone app frequently for small bits of data? e.g. latest bid on that table, game score or train status.
● Are your notifications urgent for users? e.g. stock trade, credit card alert or an accept for that date request.
At Parable, we decided a Watch app would be a great extension to our product experience.
There are three primary aspects of a Watch app…
Glance
An Apple watch Glance is a special screen that provides your app’s most relevant data. It is analogous to the iPhone widget. However it is more important because our watch interactions will be in shorter bursts of activity.
Since a glance is accessible with a quick swipe, it’s a window to your app. It may be the only way users use your app e.g. weather. The effort involved to create a Glance is minimal, so all watch apps should bundle one. Include the most actionable set of content to avoid the user having to tap to get more details. Parable’s Glance (below) showcases the top popular daily Parables while the Weather Glance shows the most relevant temperature details.
App Screens
Your primary development efforts should be centered around the main Watch App screens. Designing for a tiny screen requires uncompromising simplification; every screen, flow and navigation should be a minimal subset of your iPhone app. Not all functionality is portable given the basic layouts and constrained one tap or voice input mechanisms. Complex rendering and layouts are not allowed for good reason.
For each iPhone screen decide whether it is required on the Watch. Select which pieces of information to show and which interactions are appropriate. Information hierarchy is crucial on this constrained canvas. The most important details belong on top since a user is unlikely to scroll a lot. Apple added Force Touch for quick access to functionality without the need to scroll or navigate; enable this menu everywhere with your top user actions. The light weight watch screens are an opportunity to simplify your backend and improve response times; people inherently expect faster load times as screens get smaller.
Take a look at how we designed the main Parable Watch interaction flow below: user scrolls a list of popular parables, taps to see details, views people who liked it and follows them if they so wish.
On the flip side, our Parable create experience was sufficiently complicated that we decided against enabling this functionality on the watch.
Notifications
Notifications might be one of the most important reasons to build a Watch App. A watch, however, is much more personal than a phone. Consequently, notifications, an acceptable model on phones, could be incredibly disruptive on a watch. If overused, users might disable notifications from your app altogether or worse, uninstall your app.
iOS does not provide built-in support to selectively enable notifications on the watch yet. The best approach is to either advise users to review current notification triggers on watch app install or create separate notification settings to surface only the ones relevant to the watch. This way users don’t feel tricked into a barrage of watch notifications. Notification layouts are defined into short look for glimpses and long look for detailed view (below).
The long look version in particular is more endearing than its iPhone counterpart, allowing for a full visual experience that you should undoubtedly capitalize on. Like all notifications, keep the text short with not more than 3 buttons. Make the long look as descriptive, engaging and self-contained as possible to save the user from a tap needed to open the app.
Watch Apps will evolve dramatically in the weeks following their April 24th launch. These pointers will help you get a great app off the ground. You can check out our final in-development demo below.
Send me your Apple Watch thoughts on Twitter @amitpaka. p.s. download Parable here.
