Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The Smartwatch Design Manifesto

It's Time For A FunctionalSmartwatch

Executive Summary

There is target group unsatisfied by smartwatches so far: People that see technology as a tool to achieve their goals. To increase their efficiency and overall performance. For them it's not a status symbol to show off.

Utilitarian Design Principles:
  • Form follows function
  • Aesthetics has a lower priority than function.
  • With function I mean:
    • Ergonomics
    • Durability (e.g. average product life before first malfunction)
    • Reliability (Utilitarians like to have 99.9% of the time a fully reliable, responsive smartwatch)

Introduction:

I use smartwatches since 2 years and I keep a close eye on all major product releases; I am not satisfied with the general trend.
The industry of personal technology, seems to have forgotten to think from first principles. Elon Musk talked about this at length:

Either the producers of technology have forgotten that technology is about functionality and utility or the producers think we the customers have stopped buying technology for its utility in our life.


The current smartwatches of 2015 are all about looking stylish and having a plethora of different semi-functional features. Of course bragging rights by wearing a shiny, stylish fashion item can be a reason for purchase, but usually not for utilitarians. Utilitarians also do not care about accessories with distracting toy like functionalities.

When I think of a utilitarian I think of someone driven by a purpose. Purpose like spreading philosophy, fighting for the weak, fighting for freedom etc.
Those purpose people want tools that increase their ability to do and achieve things. Technology that focuses on style, status symbolism and a thousand distracting functions is not useful for purpose people.



Ergonomics mean:

  • Learning from age old functional digital watches like the Casio wristwatches when it comes to readability, battery life, weight and button placement.
  • Lightweight: Choosing light materials. Unapologetic plastic is probably the way to go.
  • Non glare display. Like on a Lenovo ThinkPad, utilitarians are okay with sacrificing, shiny surfaces for non-glare surfaces if it increases readability.
  • A focus on essential functions to reduce clutter and complexity.

Reliability & Durability

We utilitarians are okay with a slightly heavier device if the breaking point are especially reinforced with more material strength.
We are okay with a simple basic User Interface if the system thereby is more stable and uses less battery.
Durability is increased if parts like the watch straps are easily replaceable and are available at a low price.

1. Utilitarians are conscious of costs:

The price point is for many utilitarians an important factor. A lower price means they get more function per invested money. If a wireless recharging platform adds $30 to the price of the watch many would like to leave it out.

2. Utilitarians like to be focused and fast

A focused smartwatch delivers efficiently on the core functions and leaves out all functions that are not essential for a smartwatch. Core functions are time and delivering urgent and important information.

Important core-functionalities:

  1. Showing the time. All the time.
  2. Important Incoming Call Alerts
  3. Incoming Important Message Alerts (Text, Email, WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter)
  4. Important Calendar Reminder
  5. Low Battery warning for phone and watch 
  6. Loss of connection warning 
  7. Low energy Emergency mode for displaying time (clear indicators) 
  8. Kitchen timer 
  9. Vibrate at set intervals (e.g. hourly) 
  10. Set to airplane/Battery saving mode 
  11. Mute vibrations 
  12. Indicator of Watch Battery in percentage 
  13. Indicator that charging is going on and “fully charged” indicator 
  14. Music volume 
  15. Music track skipping (next, previous) 
  16. Music track (Play/pause)

Secondary, nice to have functionalities:

  1. Pomodoro timer 
  2. All watch settings directly accessibly on the watch
  3. Stop Watch 
  4. Additional customized time Zones with customized city names 
  5. Current temperature and precipitation likelihood in percent within the next 60 minutes
  6. Hourly temperature and precipitation likelihood for the rest of the day 
  7. Weather warnings, Umbrella reminder
  8. News alerts only for important news (adjustable frequency of 1-20 (configurable) alerts per month in close cooperation with Bloomberg, Reuters, FOX Business, Google News or CNN)
  9. Only the Apple Watch has a reliable Heart Rate monitor and the Apple Watch is overpriced in the eyes of many utilitarians and not focused on core targets, like showing the time all the time.
  10. Recharging as seldom as possible, 7 days would be perfect. Utilitarians are okay with a smartwatch weighing 20 gram more if it adds 3 days of battery life.
Software and Hardware Guidelines:
  • Software:
    • No Animations between screens, just display next screen as fast as possible
    • The Pairing App on the smartphone consumes a minimum of resources. The settings for message filtering happen in the message apps. Facebook has tons of message filtering settings and Gmail has priority settings. The smartwatch companion app should only be used for sending notifications to the watch and to make changes to watch parameters like vibration strength.
    • The watch is blazingly fast every button press is translated into an action on the screen within the tenth of a second. There should be no loading screen. A watch is there to be glanced on. It is not a toy that we want to play with.
    • Every action has to be completed in the least amount of time, with the least amount of button presses.
    • Filtering of important vs unimportant messages
  • Important Hardware Requirements:
    • Bluetooth 4.0 for connection with iPhone or Android
    • Survives rain and washing hands
    • Great display visibility: outside, inside and at night (Utilitarians are okay with sacrificing color displays if monochrome displays offer longer battery or better readability in the sun)
    • Lightweight, durable Straps that are easily replaceable
    • Works well with tight fitting winter jackets, or long sleeve T-shirts
  • Secondary Hardware Requirements:
    • Survives day at the beach in terms of heat, salt water and sand impact.
    • Survives 50 drops from 1,5meters
    • Square display, because this way more text fits onto display
    • Surface structure and form of each buttons is different so the haptics make it easy to hit the right button without looking at them
    • Display is protected from scratches by being 0.5 mm lower than casing. Utilitarians are okay with a slightly scratched case if this keeps the screen pristine and readable.
    • Fast Information shortcuts via hardware button combinations, similar to "Ctrl+Alt+Del" shortcuts. Assuming the smartwatch has three buttons on the left and three buttons on the right, these are possible shortcuts: Both upper/lower buttons. Diagonal up, Diagonal down. Both left and right middle buttons. Possible customizable shortcut functions: temperature including precipitation likelihood in percent within the next 60 minutes, play music/ stop music, kitchen timer, missed calls, next calendar events, missed messages, mute/unmute watch vibrations
    • Information shortcuts access cached data on watch so that info is visible within 0.1 seconds of pushing buttons
Some Utilitarians like to customize for increased personal ergonomics and efficiency:
They like to set:
  • Backlight brightness
  • Vibration Strength and duration
  • Text Size
  • Low battery mode percentage threshold
  • Notification message display duration of messages in seconds
  • Special Indicators on the Dashboard like (outside temperature, next meeting, birthday reminder, number of missed calls etc.)

User Interfaces

The graphical user watch interfaces by both Google and Apple seem to be geared towards colorful images and smooth animations. Utilitarians like speed, clarity, simplicity and ergonomics instead.

Real life examples of functional products:

  • Apple Earpods 
  • Amazon Kindle Reader 
  • Google Nexus 5 
  • Lenovo ThinkPad line
  • E-Ink Displays
  • Transflective LCDs (used with Sony smartwatches 2 and 3)


Even before the rise of Smartwatches there were different models for the fashion and status crowd as well as for the utilitarians. In terms of value for money, reliability, readability, weight, sturdiness and accuracy a Casio watch usually outperforms a Rolex.
In 2004 Nokia published fashion oriented phones like the 7260. 
Nokia had lost sight of customer functionality needs and was soon surpassed by 

more utilitarian phone brands like Blackberry and Apple. 
ThinkPads like the T450 are clearly designed with a focus on utility, ergonomics and the form follows function principle.

Designed by Le Corbusier in 1928 this chair displays beautiful timeless design.
In comparison to a modern ergonomic office chair it's functionality in a work environment is negligible.

Sturdy, simple, reliable, useful.
Pagers are the predecessors of utilitarian smartwatches.

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