iPod Watch design attempt from a User Experience consultant

The hype is ridiculous. Plenty of ideas have been flown around, some more plausible than others, but nonetheless, I think there might actually be something in this and would make a lot of business sense for Apple.

Apple thinks ahead like most companies should, but don’t. It seems they have this magical grand master plan where they’re secretly working on ideas, but at the same time all the clues are sitting right under our noses helping them learn, while making money. It seems to me that the last two generations of iPod nano have been nothing more than experimenting with the upcoming iPod Watch. The Gen 6 form factor was rather conducive to a watch, especially when LunaTik and subsequently millions of other watchband accessories became a hit. Gen 7 was a little more subtle. I think Apple realised the 1.55-inch screen on Gen 6 was too small and that it wouldn’t be able to augment enough features from our iPhones to make it a plausible additional accessory. Although the Gen 7 form-factor threw us off the iPod Watch smell, the screen size at 2.5-inches is surprisingly ideal for a watch, especially if combined with a curved-glass display.

I’m generally quite a skeptic to the rumor-mill and prefer to arrive at conclusions myself as to whether suggested ideas would be considered plausible by Apple, so the only way to figure this one out was to start the old-fashioned way.

Brushing up on my maths skills, I measured out the screen size cut-out based on the current Gen 7 iPod nano. My objective was to wear it for the day and hope that some use-cases would spring to mind. Even my fiancée was nice enough to allow it at dinner (it was Valentines day), despite the strange looks I got from the tables near us once they noticed that my e-ink watch was actually just the regular, non-changing kind of ink.

Ultimately, I came to a few interesting conclusions for how the watch could be used and I think there are a few pretty convincing use-cases, but I’ll focus on those in an upcoming post. Right now I want to put forward some findings on how the watch would be designed. Here is a user experience consultant’s first attempt at product design:

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Design

Straight to the point: nothing that shouldn’t be there. Clean, simple and more importantly, practical.

First thing that should be noted is that the iPod Watch is removable from the band. This was a key design decision as I think it allows third-party watch-band accessories to suit different people’s tastes and given this device is going to be worn daily by many, needs an ability to be replaced with wear and tear. Will surely bring in the pennies for Apple too.

I’ve opted for rubber in my concept as I think it’s comfortable, friendliest to your skin, robust, weather-proof and, with high quality rubber, can look really elegant.

The band design would need to be purchased in your size and connects with a magnetic aluminium clasp. The fitted sizing is one decision that I’m still battling with. How would the sizing system work? How could you order online and know your size?

Headphone jack: there’s no place better than the bottom of the screen. On the left of the watch, the headphone cord would hit your hand, on the right would be obstructed by your clothing, top would leave the cord dangling annoyingly over the screen. Once again, wireless is preferred, but the option for the jack should be there. The headphone jack could also serve as the speaker output. (In hindsight, the design is a little flawed as the jack would leave really little room for the screen to sit above. Would probably need to drop the inset a little lower on the band).

Mic on top of the screen to facilitate augmented calls and input for Siri to handle text input (obviously no keyboard on this thing). Who knows, perhaps even an iSight camera wouldn’t be so ridiculous? Perhaps we’ll leave that for future iPod Watch generations.

Button on the right handles sleep/wake functionality to show/hide the display: very similar interaction to your Gen 7 iPod nano.

Lightning connector on the inside for charging and potential data transfer to third-party accessories: I’m thinking extended battery watch bands, additional sensors etc.

Screen

Obviously multi-touch, based heavily on the current gen iPod nano.

Has to be curved. Especially given that it’ll need to accommodate different wrist sizes. Apple just needs to nail the angle of curvature and they should be right. The curvature should also be on a consistent angle (following a fixed circumference) so that it would allow alternate methods of attaching 3rd-party accessories/bands. I’m thinking sliding into a metal enclosure/band for classic metal watch designs, bling and so on.

Doesn’t necessarily need to be flexible. I imagine this would cause complications with the band having to accommodate compression/tension. Just because it can doesn’t mean it should.

Battery life

People are firstly skeptical about how short the battery life would be in an iPod Watch. One thing I noticed when I purchased my iPad, was how much longer my iPhone battery lasted. Splitting our interaction time between multiple devices is, strangely, a great way to improve the battery life of each devices. I think the same applies to an iPod Watch.

A few days on stand-by, and roughly 24 hours continuous music playback doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

Connectivity

Bluetooth 4.0 makes sense. Low power means that augmenting your phone is possible without depleting precious charge on both your phone and the iPod Watch.

Lighting cable. Makes me wonder how far in advance Apple plans their project pipeline. The shift to the Lightning cable seemed useless, but here is where the new tiny size makes things much more sense. Ideally the watch should be completely wireless, but I think that battery life is a crucial trade-off that shouldn’t be made. To tell it any better, I’d need tests and the data to verify the trade-off.

Headphones. It’d be nice to expect everyone to connect to bluetooth headphones, but once again, truth is that the 3.5mm jack ain’t going nowhere any time soon. If you think it’s annoying running with headphones connected, consider that most people do it today anyway, instead they hold their iPhone in their hand. I’d prefer the former.

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The magnetic band clasp could eventually contain an NFC chip to facilitate payments. The clasp would be connected to the watch through the band in order to give UI feedback on transactions. The paper prototype clearly indicated the best placement of an NFC chip would be the inside of your wrist. This would be the killer use-case, but lets hope the solution is baked and ready to eat first.

In my next post, I’ll cover some of the use-cases I’ve considered, especially what the watch would be capable of together with an API, how Siri is crucial to it’s success, and how your iPhone will increasingly become your pocket modem.

Looking forward to see what Apple comes up with.