Companion App Design Guidelines
How to create a holistic user experience across hardware and companion apps.
To say wearables have increased in popularity is a drastic understatement. From annually-updated Apple Watches to implanted medical devices, wearable technology has a place in many people’s day-to-day lives. As new hardware enters the market, a critical companion of that hardware’s user experience is often overlooked: the apps and digital experiences that supplement and control the hardware.
“Companion apps” aren’t just reserved for wearables, though. They can, and should, be a seamless supplement to the user experience of advanced hardware across sporting goods, healthcare, automotive, shipping, logistics and more. Every physical product that has a digital companion app needs to consider a user’s experience holistically.
Over the past several years we’ve worked closely with partners on companion apps, and have developed the following series of guidelines essential for anyone creating seamless, beautiful companion app experiences.
Map All Inputs & Outputs
Start with the types of feedback and information a device captures and shares with the user. This will define the information flow between a device and its companion app. Once mapped, it’s easy to identify what information is relevant to each moment of an experience.
Many wearable devices transmit notifications through a screen, lights, or haptic feedback. To avoid confusion and notification fatigue, it’s important to clearly define what information should be handed-off to a companion app and what information can be communicated through the wearable device itself. Considering active alerts, passive alerts, and how they may be intrusive or difficult to understand is critical.
In addition to outputs like haptics or lights, wearables also often have buttons or screens to receive inputs from the user. Back and forth communication between the user and the device is often best suited for relaying status and quick information. Companion apps shine when providing additional context to those status updates.
Think about fitness tracking: vibration is normal to alert a user of their heart rate thresholds or distance they’ve traveled. However, if you’re training regularly a good companion app experience would let you view your heart rate trends over time. All contextual information would live in the app and would also let you reset notification thresholds on your wearable if your training zones improve over time. The game here is minimizing unneeded noise. Apple’s Activity app not only manages notifications well, but also visualizes all of a user’s contextual information in a beautiful but straightforward app interface.
Define Your Persona
It’s useful to think about the device and its companion app in the context of personas like a coach, a teacher, a doting friend, or a personal security advisor. Each persona would have very different goals and communication styles. A coach or teacher might instruct you through certain skills or lessons (possibly with more notifications), while a doting friend may check-in less frequently but with more meaningful information (through fewer notifications).
For home security, a personal security advisor might only live in the background, offering reassurance from time-to-time but giving you important peace of mind when you’re out of town or traveling. Products like Ring do just that, letting you know when someone is at your door or if someone forgot to set your alarm.
Consider the App’s Visibility
After understanding the inputs and outputs of the hardware, and after developing a sense of its persona, you can begin to develop an understanding of how visible the companion app should be. Redundant notifications on a device and from the app will often overwhelm a user and unnecessarily complicate the overall user experience.
It’s often helpful to think about the severity of the situation in which you choose to send notifications to the device. Within healthcare, for example, a diabetes pump that has a companion app might track a user’s glucose levels over time and relay vital information back to the pump when levels drop too high or low. In this scenario, having the companion app take too much of a backseat may have serious consequences for a user’s health. More frequent notifications with straightforward, clearly-understood messages would not only be beneficial, but they would also become essential for the health and wellbeing of the patient.
In our experience, concurrently designing hardware and its companion app is typically the most successful approach. Whether designing in tandem or updating a companion app experience after a hardware update, it’s helpful to utilize exercises like journey mapping to build an overall view of the experience with both the hardware and companion app being taken into account.
Hardware and companion app mapping makes it easier to visualize capabilities and think through the shared relationship of data and communication. This allows for better decision-making about hardware capabilities, what the communication-handoff process looks like between the hardware and companion app, and, ultimately, how to create the most seamless and holistic user experience.
