Designing PayTm experience for Apple Watch

I am not affiliated to PayTm or Apple . . . Yet

Lets not kid ourselves, Apple devices are awesome. They are awesome not just because they look and feel good but also because apple products capture huge chunks of market. This is good for companies and developers. For instance just by designing+developing for iPhones alone one has the potential to reach large numbers of customers.

So in the next few weeks I will be reimagining how our Indian apps will look on watchOS. I begin with PayTm because they want to be first (I am not Kidding).

People have routinely mocked apple watch but it took 80% of total revenue for the smartwatch market. That’s dominance. And, India’s largest mobile payments and commerce platform PayTm has its own love affair with dominance. Its CEO and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has said that they want to be first in the market to make the move. And he sure is gearing up to get himself a nice watch. The rest of us might just settle for an Apple Watch. And with Apple shifting manufacturing to India one can hope that Apple products in India will become cheaper.

So I imagined how would it feel to:

1. Recharge your mom’s phone number right when she asks you to; from your watch. (Yes, on some carriers it still “costs” 200 and above for 1Gb 3G data; What a JIOke!)
2. Be notified when that 1TB Hard Disk becomes available in stock to buy again.

App walkaround + navigating previous Orders

Apple watch is designed for quick interactions. With watchOS 3 internal target interaction time is reduced from 5.0 seconds to just 2.0 seconds. So that a task can be accomplished in a very short time. Its a challenge for interaction designers to set the architecture of the app so that it takes least amount of clicks to accomplish a task. Like here, as the app finishes launching, in no time time you can browse through your previous orders and hit Repeat. Your recharge would be done. And you have accomplished this task on PayTm in mere four clicks.

Another essential feature in Apple Watch that app designers should pay attention to are app notifications. There are two types of notifications in watchOS. Short look notifications that stays momentarily on the screen before disappearing. These are glanceable. What that means is that user get essential information by just looking at the screen. This information should help user to decide whether that notification is something that he needs to take action or it can wait for later.

Here the user is first made aware that an item in his whishlist is now available for purchase. Then user can choose to interact with watch to expand the notification into something what is Long Look notification. Here the user is provided with more information as to which item is now in stock, how much does it cost now. Along with the information, now the user is given some actionable buttons. What actions these buttons should perform can greatly enhance user experience if the actions are choosen keeping user’s needs and behavior in mind. For instance, a user might want to perform the purchase right now. OR. One might want to add money to his paytm account before he makes the purchase. In both cases clicking on respective buttons will take the user to the most relevant place in the app.

Wearable tech sector is filled with a lot possiblities to make our lives efficient. Healthcare and workout apps have made the move. They are now more relevant to more users. I believe more apps should embrace the wearable tech. We are entering the age of augmented interactions. The way we interact with our surroundings have changed more in last 20 years than it did in the last 2000 years. This is exciting for all of us.

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