Smart Watch

Cool Project,
It’s great to be able to watch it develop.

I’m interested in how you’ll apply the color scheme you picked out. I like how there’s just a hint of orange.
It might be nice if you applied that color to the personas page also

Keeping my branding research in mind, I started to come up with a look that would fit with those other products. I’ve swapped the diamond-cut pattern for a grid-cut pattern, and I think the design would be much simpler as one single piece (no magnets or assembly or anything) with a NATO-style strap.


I also did a little thinking on the brand/logo, riffing on the idea of a round peg in a square hole.

Part of the reason i have been so interested in this is because I actually did this project with my team about a year ago for a client. Unfortunately the entire project was mothballed, but the timing would have been perfect if they stayed with it. We got to a pretty finished level of design by the end. I can’t show it (not until it gets a little older and dustier, then no one will care) but I’ll give you a tip. What would make this product much more compelling is if it actually was a “buddy” to an entirely new phone and that phone’s UI and hardware matched…

yo: I like that idea about the matching smartphone, I may just do that!

I’m not a logo designer, but I thought I’d come up with some sort of identity that fits with the watch design. I kinda like ‘dot’ as the name of the watch, what do you guys think?


After doing those size studies, I realized the space I’m designing for is much smaller than I thought. I’ve taken away all the unnecessary elements on the watch face to keep it as clean as possible.

Here, I’m thinking of a few different ways I can alert the wearer of when they have an upcoming reminder or appointment.

I’m starting to lean towards having a kind of countdown timer that just tells you when you have your next event. Maybe it just tells you when you have 1 hour or X number of minutes before the event so you’re not constantly looking at a countdown timer…

Instead of showing your mail inbox or facebook notifications (or who’s calling you), I want the main feature to be a calendar. What’s a watch for if not to keep you on schedule?

I’m curious if this is still your pitch for your project. It seems to me that you’ve taken all this great technology and limited it to one application. In some ways that makes sense, but I think you’ll have to be more careful how you build your case for your project. Calling it a smart watch for instance will put you in the category of products that do what your concept does (though maybe not as well), plus a bajillion other things. I’ve been checking in on this thread here and there, but I’ve also been watching that Pebble watch go from 1-6 million in fundraising in days. It seems people do want messages, texts, emails, callerID, etc. on their wrist.

For me, that’s not something desirable. I’d be more into a watch like yours. A focused product surrounding the idea of helping you stay on time and keep on schedule. Like smart phones, once all these other features get added it becomes less focused and in many ways inefficient at it’s main task. However you pitch the final solution, I think you should steer clear of making too many direct comparisons to smart watches and focus on the benefit your product really sells which is, timeliness.

Side note: I personally would be less interested in a solution that might require me to get a whole new phone or whole new calendar service. I’d rather it integrate well and compliment the services I currently use which are often forced upon me, especially in the work setting.

My next update will be addressing a lot of these issues, thanks for the input :slight_smile:

I’m thrashing a lot on how to finish the hardware design, so this update is taking a little longer than I expected. Here are a few of my rough sketches:


After getting the original circular design into CAD, I realized I had no room for the strap to attach itself. Now, I’m playing around with a square base and a circular bezel. In the drawings above you can see a couple variations on how the screws are oriented to hold the strap bar in place.

I’m thinking through how the watch-phone interaction is going to happen, but you can see some of my early developments here. Sorry for the roughness here, I’m trying to develop the idea a bit more before I spend time committing it to vector illustrations.


Basically, the watch is a way to display the task management software on the smart phone. It’s kind of like the “Action Method”, except it encourages you to choose a time to complete the task instead of letting it sit in a to-do purgatory.

All of the task input and organization flows through the smart phone interface, and it’s simply displayed on the watch screen. Spinning the bezel allows you to flip through the different sets of tasks you’ve set up.

This will make more sense once it’s all executed visually, but if you guys have thoughts so far please let me know!

Circles resting in squares are tough to pull off. Check out the straps on a Bell & Ross for example. The typically taper quite a bit as they move away from the square case to make them proportionally feel right:

Tsovets also have some subtle shaping.

That’s a good point, Yo, adding a square shape to the design may open a bit of a pandora’s box. Though I am getting a bit antsy that I don’t have a physical model yet, so I may just CAD out a few different options (square, round, hexagonal, etc.) and send them off to shapeways so I can see what they’re really going to look like. It’s hard to gauge the design when it’s still in sketch or CAD form.

Interesting project. I’ve been lurking and following but not replying.

Don’t waste your time in CAD. Make something out of bits of wood, foam or other simple material. Something like a watch is esp. key to get proportions and feel right and it’s almost impossible to do in CAD. 1 mm can make all the difference to scale and it’s not something you can easily reference in CAD.

You should be making tons of models for something this simple. If you haven’t gone through at least 20 low rez desktop models, you aren’t doing the process very effectively. If you had done this earlier, you wouldn’t be this far along and had to deviate from the circle only shape to a circle + square. It’s a major change that could kill or lift the whole design. The doodle you have are good, but I’d also recommend some higher fidelity sketches and detailing in addition to the desktop physical modeling.

Need to start getting into the finishes and details physically as well. What does the diamond knurl feel like to hold/turn? How does changing that to a square pattern affect the grip/feel? What kind of texture is on the crown? is the glass crowned or flat? In something as small as a watch it’s the fine textures, details and fractions of a MM that make all the difference.

R

Thanks for the input, R. I have a lot more experience with the first half of the design process (research, sketches) than I do with the final half (models, finishes). That’s a big part of the reason why I started this project to begin with, so I’m glad you’re helping to point me in the right direction! Looks like it’s time to make some models :wink:

Why not stick with the circle design you have? There are certainly ways to keep the circle and attach a strap. Why not stick with the circle design you have? There are certainly ways to keep the circle and attach a strap.

I personally love Bell & Ross watches, so that aesthetic appeals to me, but if you wanted to stay true to the original style/design I think you can find a way to achieve that look in a clean manner.

I think you guys are right, I’ll stick with the round watch. It’s simpler and fits better with my branding and my market. I sketched out a bunch of side views on the train to explore some of my options.



I like the last few I came up with here, I’m thinking that the rotating bezel could be slightly wider than the base to make it easier to grip. Though it’s possible that all I need is maybe 2mm of thickness with a rough texture to allow your fingers to get a grip.

I’ll take these concepts into foam or wood this weekend to see which ones make the most sense.

Yo: On the subject of having a phone designed to complement the smart watch, this concept is giving me some ideas
moon03.jpg
Saw this on CoDesign this morning: Watch This Ingenious UI Idea, For Dragging Files From Your Phone To Co

Hi guys, I’m working on some more detailed drawings of the watch hardware, showing the front and back.


This is just the first one, I’m working on getting a handful of other designs up to this level. After this I plan on testing these out as scale models to see how they look and feel.

That phone to computer interface is interesting.

The ID is looking good. A little too stealth for what it does in my opinion though. Nothing stands out from the norm. I feel like you haven’t really flushed out the aspirational persona. You posted some possible use cases that is pretty functional. Who does the wearer want to be? What other things in their life emotionally resonate with them? How does the aesthetic tie in to all of that?

That’s true, it does look a little bit anonymous as it is now. I may have to go back to the drawing board a bit for the overall theme.

What you said about aspirational design is interesting, I haven’t thought about that. It kind of reminds me of a watch design I saw recently that is supposed to remind you of driving while you aren’t actually driving.


The second hand move up the revs and back every 60 seconds, so it looks like the RPMs on your dash.

The design itself is pretty minimal, but all the little details allude to aspects of driving.

If I could think of a theme or activity that my users aspire to like in this example, that should inform my design a lot.

Interesting project and process. You are probably done with it already but I’d like to hear more about how you continued the project.

I agree that the wearer should be taken into account as early as possible, and should be well-researched. To relate to something specific they have an affinity for, like the driver’s watch, may seem like a nice idea but can also be a bit shallow and ‘stigmatizing’ (is that a word in english?). You may want to relate it more to deeper values in their life and more subtle qualities of products that they love to use. It’s more about getting an empathic feel for the user, largely a subconscious process.

About the calendar functionality, it seems like a good idea. To couple it directly with other devices, even better. I also like how the UI design has evolved into something extremely simple and implicit, although you probably want more explicit info on demand. Maybe you’d also want to change the timescale: day/week/month/year. To do the interface design, a good user study can also clarify a lot: how do they use the calendar, which features are most important, etc.? And through a more thorough study you could answer questions like you were asking in the beginning, like how much information should be available.

About the process: it seems a bit as if your design process has gone all over the place. I agree with the point that for such an item it can be most fruitful to create a large amount of desktop models (as long as each model has good thinking behind it of course). I would like to hear you reflect on your process, such as when you did which activities, how much time it took and how valuable it was to make certain design decisions. I’m sure such reflections would be helpful for all of us, even the experienced pros.

Thanks!

I ended up putting this project on hold to spend more time developing my portfolio, but thanks for your comments! In the new year I hope to be able to revisit this project with a fresh outlook.

I still feel like a round LCD screen would be an ideal shape for the face, and I haven’t seen anyone make a smart watch with a round screen to date. I also think there’s a lot of potential to create a new UI metaphor that doesn’t just look like a shrunken down phone UI.

If I get this going again, you guys will be the first to know :wink:

I, by the way, completely agree with that :slight_smile:

Smartwatches all tend to look like these gadgets. Especially the square screen contributes to that. That just keeps the geek factor too high for many people who appreciate a watch that looks more refined or more ‘human’. I, for one, stay away from them just for that reason. People who create smartwatches should take a week to visit Switzerland and have a good look around to become more sensitive to what a clock can be. Then taking that, and the technology/UI part in perspective, the smartwatch will just have to evolve into its own product category.