The Apple Watch is not a watch
What does the Apple Watch’s arrival mean for design and software businesses?
There has been much written already about the Apple Watch introduction. Beyond the implications for Apple and the technology industry, what does the Apple Watch’s arrival mean for design and software businesses?
I sat down with my colleagues at Normative* to chat about this. Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
Why should companies be paying attention to the Apple Watch?
Matt: You should be paying attention because any time a big company makes a move that big you should pay attention. Will it affect our clients’ business in the near future? In most cases, no. Like any first gen Apple product it’s probably not going to hit mass market for at least 2 generations. And by that point we’ll have a better idea of what it actually does and how people are using it.
Blair: I think it’s important to pay attention to, at the very least, as a phenomenon. Apple has massive cash reserves, they have an incredible supply chain, they own the points of distribution… and it’s probably safe to say that the watch won’t fail because it was under-engineered or poorly executed. It’ll succeed or fail based on the viability of its utility alone. Is it plausible? Is it a viable, well-timed proposition?
Matt: If you look at Apple’s history they have a tendency to release products with a really good viable proposition that are way too early, flop, and then come back in a new form and take over. Like Blair said, they can put something out and it doesn’t even necessarily have to be a financial success if it starts to change the way they think about how they want to use technology.
What is different about Apple introducing its Watch versus the other smart watches that are already in the market?
Matt: Apple has got the ecosystem, and more than anything, they have the reputation and marketing machine behind it. So everyone will know about it. People who didn’t even know smart-watches existed will know about this one. There is a huge group of technology-interested people who have never heard of the Pebble and all of them will have heard of the Apple Watch. Just because it’s Apple.
What is interesting about the Apple Watch from a design perspective?
Matt: Apple has made some really smart design decisions. Like for instance there’s a crown. The crown is the primary interface, and that’s a really nice choice because it plays off the traditional watch interface, whereas other ones haven’t done that, so they are more like wearing a computer and this is more like wearing a watch that also does computing.
I feel like those kinds of interactions are awkward enough that this is a transitional phase between the current status quo and something much more elegant.
Ryan: In terms of interface and interaction design the crown is ancient! So we’re not that far out of a cultural experience with an object that’s new. So the wrist is kind of the ideal place for it right now. It’s open real estate.
Blair: I think that it’s like designing for yet another small screen and that will have some specific implications, but that to me is not necessarily why I’m interested in the watch or what I think make it interesting. What makes it interesting is that it’s a bodily extension in a way that the phone was beginning to be… Always in your hands, always on, always around us. But this thing is always touching you. And when there’s a device that’s internet enabled that allows you to reach somebody and know that it’s in contact with their body… I think that’s going to fundamentally change the nature of what it means to communicate through this device.
Matt: Yeah the contact is really important.
Blair: The contact is everything.
Matt: Just the fact that the device is touching your body, your skin, all the time, changes the way you understand its relationship to you.
What are the implications of new capabilities in the Apple Watch?
Blair: Signing up for something like Research Kit… you could do that on the phone, or your computer in theory. But I think there’s something about the intimacy of a device that touches your skin that will really stir peoples’ interest in biometrics, for one thing.
Matt: We’re getting into McLuhanisms here, this is all about our conception of self augmented by technology and how the perception of our own capabilities and our own physicality changes because of that technology.
Rebecca: The thing that is messing with my mind right now is that concerns about privacy and respite from technology are becoming increasingly urgent. But at the same time they’ve become quaint, even trite. So it goes without saying that Apple Watch presents this issue–you now have this thing on your hand, it’s literally tied to you, it’s like a kind of a prosthetic or whatever and it’s augmenting you in all these ways…
And now we’re going to have to hack new ways of avoiding interactions that are undesirable in order to be by yourself. Already we have all kinds of ways, like letting your call go to voicemail instead of ignoring it so the person doesn’t think you screened them. Now it’s attached to your body, so you have to find other ways to hack around that to not be reachable. Conditions of precarious and 24/7 labour are going to be even worse, you can’t avoid your boss, all of that.
Matt: Yeah and you can turn it off potentially but it’s socially harder too.
Rebecca: And the expectations of 24/7 availability change, and the pressure just increases and increases and increases. And even though this is happening at an exponential rate, it almost makes it harder to talk about. I mean what’s there left to say? Being worried about these things has become almost banal.
Ryan: I’m going to speak from a point of bias here, and I am not speaking for anybody in general but I see the device as giving me back time and I know that there was a number of things written about this in particular that by reducing my time, my screentime, reduces my presence, and I think that that’s the ironic thing about the Apple Watch is its potential is to give back time.
Blair: Yeah maybe.
Matt: I’m skeptical about that.
Blair: Nothing has ever given us back time.
Matt: The select few who are technologically and socially literate enough to navigate that…
Ryan: I’m biased.
Matt: …And who live in a social circle that is literate enough to navigate that, great. But yeah that’s a very very small group. So that’s fine for you but that doesn’t make it necessarily okay that this is happening.
Can you talk about how the Apple Watch is ushering in new modes of communication?
Blair: Is it possible the watch will open up a conversation about new modes of communication that don’t fit the current model of transparency… and personal privacy? I’ve been thinking about a piece of communication sent over the Apple Watch to another Apple Watch as being a hyper-intimate interaction, the opposite of which would be something totally public like a Tweet or a Facebook post.
Ryan: I like that idea of intimate and closed but that’s a text message is essentially what you’re talking about. The ultimate social network is a text message.
Blair: I don’t know, I mean, the thing can send your heartbeat. You could argue that there’s no chance anybody else is going to extract any real meaning from that message. It’s not like sending an email at all. Text kind of is. It’s the only way you can communicate with other people using touch. It’s a unique type of communication.
Rebecca: Haptic.
Ryan: They brought it up but they were trying to set a very general expectation of intimate communication that’s not public.
Matt: The flipside of that is things like a couple of years ago when we found out that iPhones were tracking your locations and storing them somewhere for who knows what. So yes it’s more intimate but it’s also more invasive.
Blair: I totally get that.
Matt: So it cuts both ways.
How does the Apple Watch impact our work at Normative?
Matt: Like any other technology that we work with, the first thing to ask is “why?” Given a client’s business realities, their customer base, their objectives, budgets, timelines, all of these things. The Apple Watch just becomes another consideration set, the same way we help our clients decide to do web app or mobile app or desktop or an embedded device. I also think that we will do ourselves a favour if we stop thinking of it as a watch and instead we start thinking about the raw capabilities that it offers. What are we trying to achieve and does having something on the body in that way or in that format help us achieve that?
Rebecca: It’s almost like the “watchiness” of it is incidental right now. It’s a wearable computer that happens to go on the same place that watches sometimes go.
Ryan: That and they called it a watch…
Blair: It’s not a watch.
Ryan: The Apple Watch is not a watch. The faster we get away from seeing it as that, the more we can see what the opportunities are.
Matt: It’s like calling the iPhone a “phone”, the name is like a Trojan horse to get people to understand what it is and the word “watch” is the same thing.
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*Design Directors Matt Nish-Lapidus and Ryan Taylor, Research Director Rebecca Pardo and Associate Design Director Blair Johnsrude.
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