Spring 2014 Mobile Interaction Design class @ UT iSchool: "Mobile News" Smartwatches & App Design

“Mobile News”

Smartwatches & App Design – A Closer Look at Pebble

What’s interesting about the news?

· Pebble (especially Pebble Steel) has been generating buzz from The Verge, ReadWrite, Mashable, USA Today, GigaOM, TIME and AppleInsider the past two weeks

· Wearable tech (especially smartwatches) stole the spotlight at the Consumer Electronic Show last year.

· During CES this year, Pebble announced they were launching an appstore on February 3^rd, 2014 with more than 1,000 apps and watchfaces to choose from.

o This happened a year after Pebble started shipping to Kickstarter backers

o The Pebble smart watch is the most successful Kickstarter project of all time, raising more than $10 million from 85,000 backers.

· Foursquare, ESPN, Yelp, GoPro, PebbleGPS are featured partners

· Banking app vibrates when user is close to overdrafting their account.

What can you currently do with a Pebble smartwatch?

· A recent ReadWrite mentions these 10 cool things a Pebble can do:

o Check into a Foursquare location

o Act as a remote camera shutter

o Shake to get Yelp recommendations

o Send texts from your watch

o Maintain your health

o Check sports scores

o Pay for Starbucks

o Get directions

o More – (iOs + Smartwatch) and Bitcoin tracker

o Control your house

§ Pebble has joined forces with iControl, maker of the smart home technology behind services from ADT, Bright House, Comcast, Cox, Rogers, Time Warner and others (Relevant to our last in class exercise).

· http://readwrite.com/2014/02/10/10-cool-things-a-pebble-smartwatch-can-do#awesm=~owiFyZP2pXxVVF

· Pebble costs $150, and Pebble Steel costs $249

· Pebble Steel is talked about having a better design whereas the first model was talked about as “dorky”

Why should we care about it from the prospective of mobile interaction design?

· Wearable computing devices basically function as mini-computers, mainly strapped on a user's wrist or face, though they may end up being worn on other parts of the body, too.

o In developing apps for them, programmers will focus on their voice-command features as well as GPS, gyroscope, compass and WiFi capabilities.

o Apps for more conventional mobile devices, by contrast, mostly use their touch-screen interface.

· Open Platform

o More opportunities for mobile interaction designers!

o https://developer.getpebble.com

· If this becomes a huge new market, apps are going to be sought over too.

· Pebble’s smartwatch app store includes categories such as games, tools and fitness (this is the first of it’s kind)

o Abbie Walsh, group director at Fjord, the Accenture Interactive design company behind the adidas miCoach smartwatch is quoted as saying:

§ "We are limited to some extent by social expectation, but therein lies the next big challenge for interaction design," said Abbie. "What are the gestures, actions, inputs that we will use when the device we're communicating with doesn't have a screen or is buried inside our clothes?"

§ "This is the true potential of the 'wearable' device. Something close to our skin, an expression of ourselves, and yet external to us, can truly lead to the next big leap in our relationship with technology," she told us. "But it needs to have a meaningful and ongoing dialogue with everyone that dons one. That means thinking beyond the device itself and understanding deeply the motivations and needs of the people who will wear it."

§ I think these are important insights into the human and computer interaction. This is a whole new way of interacting with technology.

o More information: http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/mobile-creativity/are-smartwatches-next-big-thing-in-app-design/

How do you design and develop a smartwatch app?

· It’s recommended that you start from scratch with a solid user need, and develop from there (similar to smartphone apps)

· Pebble gives developers a good set of tools and tutorials to get them started on building and coding

Why design for iOS before Android?

· Blog post from 2/11/14 from a software engineer explains the amount of resources for development have been holding them back

· “The Pebble Android app uses Bluetooth heavily, includes a Javascript runtime environment, accesses the internet and talks to the Pebble without interrupting the user experience, integrates with the Pebble appstore, works on a myriad of (over 1000) different Android devices, runs on 27 different versions and flavors of Android 4.x, and must continue to run in the background even if other apps in the system use up all the memory, or the Android device powers down or resets. All of this has to work elegantly and reliably for many thousands of Pebble Android users.”