The 4 key elements of successful smartwatch design.
Smartwatches are probably the most plausible evolutionary step between wearable and implantable electronics.
They enable health-activity tracking, knowledge enhancement, and remote control. Thought I don’t like the extra weight a time-keeping device could add to my wrist, since the arrival of the newer generation of smartwatches, I’ve been open to wear them again, at first by sheer curiosity but now also for their intrinsic utility.
In the past months I spent most of my time, and quite some energy, cohabiting with an Apple Watch and a Pebble Time (sorry Android Wear or other smart alternatives...). Regularly switching from one to the other, they joined me for most of my daily and nightly activities. The question that arises now is not ‘should I’ but ‘would I’ keep wearing them on the long run?
Reading the reviews and listening to other users didn’t really get me the answer at first, but after synthesizing all that information I actually ended up writing this text. For the answer to be ‘yes’, the smartwatch design should integrate four elementary qualities or else it will end up a failure. You could see this text as a small and humble personal digest of the ‘to do’ or ‘not to do’ items for designing a successful smartwatch. Comments and additions welcome.
1 — work week or full energy autonomy
The intimacy of having such a connected device attached to ones wrist makes it an all different kind of beast. You are literally tied to it, and it to you, so both shouldn’t impede too often with each others activities. If it can’t make you forget you are wearing it while focused on your other activities, it will undeniably fail once the honeymoon period is over. And if its recharging needs aren’t in harmony (and by that I literally mean as an harmonic), it will likely impede on your nychtemeral habits.
For example, having to recharge once a day not only implies you should worry about it instead of having your mind carry its usual duties, but also that you have whatever necessary to recharge at hand (charger, adapter, electrical power source). If this smart item does indeed become that indispensable element of your daily and nightly life (I’m also thinking sleep analysis), it will also more crucialy imply that you will have to do without it for the length of the charge, and come back to it to get it once completed. Once-a-day is way too much and work-week autonomy thus seems to be the minimal energetical autonomy duration which you should target as a compromise to full energy autonomy.
Energetical autonomy by ways of old-school crown rotation, inner gyroscopic energy regeneration (your grandfather’s watch probably has those), or whatever state-of-the-art modern mean (anything would do actually) will actually render this minimal requirement obsolete.
2 — seamless user body integration
The watch should should adapt to you, not the opposite. As such it should let you express yourself and integrate your moves, only enhancing your routines with subtlety. It must be in phase with and/or enhance your looks, while always adapting to your habits and postures. It should be able to follow you wherever you go and interact in such a way it feels a part of you. As a symbiote, it should share your body’s basic environmental adaptation abilities as well as offer discrete sensual user interface elements to communicate with it:
- resistance to moisture, mechanical, and temperature constraints
- weight, shape, size preserving usual movements and attitudes
- physical / audio / haptic / electro-magnetic interaction abilities
- display readability and discretion
- comfortable and good looking
User adaptation to compensate for the watch’s design shortcomings is a no-go. Even if you strongly believe you’re handing out a revolution, it will probably not end up well for you, and this should be limited to very specific and specialized functionalities (or extraordinarily brilliant minds).
Resistance to moisture is a necessity. And by moisture we should understand water resistance to at least the most common of daily water insults. Not only should the device physically resist H2O degradation (e.g. oxydation, inner water damage, screen mist), but also deeper immersion (shower, swimming, heavy sweating). It must have physical user interface elements still readily working when wet or under wet fingers. Anything else can be considered a failure unless there are vicariant input mechanisms easily accessing the original tactile functions.
Resistance to mechanical constraints is obviously something to consider as the watch needs to stay where it is (wristband and attachment mechanisms should be solid at rest but also under the stress from various ‘dynamic’ activities) and resist basic mechanical mishaps (falls, direct hits, pressure, scratches). It should resist wear and tear at least for a few years as such an intimate device might actually induce fondness and maybe even animism. It might as well be so successful as to make your heir want to persue wearing it...
As for temperature constraints, this item will surely be exposed to the usual range of heat you encounter at rest, work, but also when in sport activities (e.g. a day under desert sun or a night in the himalayan winds). It should probably be capable of retaining a good part of its overall functionalities even when at both temperature end ranges (autonomy, lisibility, sensory abilities, …).
Its shape, weight and size should feel natural to wear. This isn’t a bodybuilding item. The thinner and lighter the better, but in subtle balance with physical resistance, energy storage requirements, and obviously display or innards size.
Interaction abilities are an essential part of the smart formula. With such an intimate interface potential (your forearms skin), haptic feedback can be deemed a necessity. It is the wrist equivalent of the ‘foot under the table’ discretely reminding you something has come up that needs more attention without alerting the whole circle. In conjonction with both visual and audio interfaces, intelligent combination with reasonable syntax can be very versatile and powerful (I won’t go in those details, this is what makes the main qualities and defaults of the various platforms/ecosystems).
Having physical interface elements is obviously a must as these will incarnate the object with reverse physical attributes: organic senses letting you caress, touch, press, swipe, rotate physical elements or the object as a whole. Buttons and scrollwheels will offer greater landmarks and senses to your eyes and fingers than would haptic feedback alone. Electro-magnetic sensors (gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers, barometers, radiationmeters, whatevermeters, …) will surely enhance the ability of the device to feel natural, it will better know in what state or move your limb is (and by extension your body). Not only will that enable it to react to your various attitude and gestures, it will help the device better contextualize your surroundings or define your current activity for greater app functionalities, obviously leading to greater activity and health tracking.
The microphone is a must as the audible environment is a crucial part of your life experience, and the watch should therefore be able to adapt to or at least access it. It will enable voice commands or audio recording and transmission (cf connectivity). A speaker or any ability to sound should be part of the experience, but maybe not such of a necessity (c.f. connectivity). Having the watch ‘beep’ when lost could be seen as a useful feature when it gets lost or needs more urgent attention, but this is something whose requirement remains debatable.
The screen needs to be readable in most real-world situations for its apps (including time and date display) to make any sense. Its size doesn’t really matter paradoxically as it should fit the user interface scheme design, some requiring less surface real estate than others. It should however be readable both in highly lit environments (e.g. in plain sun) and full darkness (e.g. at the movies or in your bed). Readability is tightly linked to discretion in public environments as the first will greatly be impaired by lack of the second. Having your watch screen act as a beacon will obviously impede you benefiting from crucial interactions when in crowded lowly lit places where discretion is advised.
Reading the screen should never depend on any specific gesture. The later should be limited to segregating the displayed information. The screen should be on when necessary even when immobile, as you will want to check on it without impeding your social interaction. For your smartwatch to feel natural in public, you should be able to communicate with it at all times, discretely if necessary (a small glance will suffice).
Finally you don’t want it to be uncomfortable (at rest or during activities) or incompatible with your looks. It should be part of what you are and want to be, you could see it as a good haircut (one you and/or others like/see). It’s not essential but yes it is, and that really depends on the wearer and thus is highly subjective. Having customizable options for wristbands and for the watch body does make sense, but that again is something that should be in phase with the consumers/users you plan on focusing. The sober designs will probably attract a wider potential user base, but this doesn’t automatically mean commercial success as focusing on a specific niche might make the product more viable per se.
3 — reliability and evolutivity
The device should work at all times and retain all key elements during its charge cycle and lifetime. Electro-mechanically speaking, every crucial physical user interface element should be able to work under usual daily conditions and stress but also for the activities it is meant for. Even the slightest glitch in hardware or software can render the whole experience pointless. Confidence in your smartwatch will induce usage and reassure new users wondering if the learning process is worth it. Reliability on the long run will also make current users praise the object and actively let them feedback to you and others (this can go viral). This will be crucial to its evolutivity and/or long term smartwatch platform viability.
Evolutivity in software is a must, but this is a smartwatch, so it should have already been implanted in its DNA even before conception. Being able to evolve the hardware does not seem as important, but this could actually prove otherwise. Strong user adoption could lead to owners being reluctant to dismiss the body and/or wristband for replacement with a newer iteration, thus actively bypassing new functionalities you may introduce. Being able to swap the innards of higher value bodies could prove crucial for future platform success. Being able to swap the gut while keeping the jewelery / craftmanship / emotional aspects of your smart time keeping device intact, could well prove to be a future win (c.f. connectivity).
4 — connectivity
To stay smart the watch will have to retain connectivity for at least a few years. You therefore need standard communication schemes and capabilities both to connect online the Internet to foreign devices, but also directly to siblings and extension devices (headphones, speakers, remote sensors, memory, display boxes, …). WiFi and Bluetooth seem appropriate for now, but you might want your smartwatch to be futureproof if the body is of higher grade, readily adaptable to newer standards. In that later case, being able to swap the guts of the smartwatch may prove something very valuable on the long run (c.f. reliability and evolutivity).
then only should you add the gloss and lipstick.
And that’s what the software and add-on hardware extensions are all about.
addendum: For those interested in the details of my experience with the two devices, you can also check both one work-week reviews of the Apple Watch and the Pebble Time.
addendum 2:
Since the Pebble has been ‘discontinued’ (and with it the concept of the promising Pebble Core), I continue checking and actually developping for the Apple Watch. For those who asked, the Apple Watch 3 has changed nothing about my first review, except for battery life optimization. It still, in my humble opinion, sadly doesn’t provide the basics of what could be a smartwatch revolution… Apple is force-feeding us their concept and playing it safe with extensive marketing and communication reality-distortion fields.
