Designing a 2015 smartwatch to fit the expectations of dumb-watches feels more and more to me like designing a 2007 smartphone to fit the expectations of the blackberry crowd (physical keyboard, removable battery).
The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong. And doing so on a device that's already touch, and already using swipe-to-scroll, feels twice and wrong and unnecessarily confusing.
I understand the intent and the goal, but the inconsistent use of the crown -- if it's so great, why can I still swipe to scroll at all? -- is a tell. It would have been better to simply detect swipe-to-scroll along the right edge of the bezel (if not along the right side of the frame itself) to effect "scrolling without obscuring".
Four-ways-to-click (crown-click vs tap vs force tap vs tap-and-hold) is an eyebrow-raise-er all its own.
Also: displays should be wider. At fifty- to one-hundred-percent wider the display would be far better for notifications and would make the selection of A/B buttons more clear and precise.
The next time you get a notification on your phone, rest your phone on your wrist, so the notification is displayed roughly where a smartwatch would sit. Ask yourself whether that notification would still "work", if it were crammed into an Apple Watch-sized screen. Some certainly do. More can be made to work alright, if font size were reduced. IME, most simply don't work.
There just isn't enough room to get enough meaningful information onto a screen that size, in a comfortable font size, for me to make good decisions about what can be ignored and what should be addressed.
You can mitigate this problem if you can ignore all messages of a given type (e.g. don't even bother getting email alerts on your wrist). But even if you could do this, it would be better if you didn't have to. A screen that enables better decisions would make for a more useful object.
Have you had a chance to use the watch yet? This level of fine-grained criticism, which is about the phenomenology of using the watch, feels baseless unless you're one of the people who've been giving a review unit and have been using it for days. It's interesting to speculate, maybe, but confidence in any of these assertions, even formulating them as statements rather than questions, seems strange to me.
> The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong.
That's not the point of the digital crown. It's to free your "swipe to scroll" gesture which blocks a screen of that size, to a physical input. Apple has been very clear on it's existence, and it's taking a classic component of a watch and propelling it into the modern era.
> It would have been better to simply detect swipe-to-scroll along the right edge of the bezel (if not along the right side of the frame itself) to effect "scrolling without obscuring".
That's how it basically seems to work, judging by videos. The video reviews I've seen have shown the user using one finger to operate the crown, rather than pinching it between two.
I'm unconvinced this is a better solution than sliding a finger along the side of the bezel - or possibly around the entire rim, for different functions.
Considering the technology in the crown, it's possible this would have been cheaper and more reliable as well as a better fit for the haptic features in the rest of the design.
I like the idea of using the edge of the device as a scroll area. Maybe Apple tried it and it didn't work out, or it didn't translate well into zooming, or it wasn't precise enough? (You can rotate a dial with a lot more precision than a big bulbous finger moving on the edge of a tiny device.)
Regardless, I'm glad there is a way to scroll without covering the screen and adding more skin oil to it.
I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of the display being wider. The traditional shape of a watch was that way because of the mechanism inside. Wearables, like the Apple Watch, should do away with the traditional watches form factor constraint.
I would like to see these devices progress to more of a band form factor with a wider and curved display to fit the contour of our wrist.
My quasi-educated guess is that Apple figures they have the best shot at wide acceptance -- particularly with the first model -- if it doesn't feel "weird" compared to other watches, and that that's informed a lot of design decisions.
I think a curved display could be pretty challenging. You write "the contour of our wrist," but the contour of your wrist and of mine probably aren't the same, right? So is the display flexible? Is it the same size for everyone? Will someone with a smaller wrist find the display "wrapping around" more than someone with a larger wrist? What interactions will be made better by such a curved display, and what interactions will be made worse by one? And is the tradeoff appropriate?
I've also been surprised that they maintained the same form factor of existing watches. If it were double the width, you'd have more screen space, more space for battery power underneath and something that would stand out.
I can only imagine they are marketing first to the people who want something new, but don't want it to look like new technology.
It's probably also important as a point of differentiation that they keep it looking very different to a phone screen.
But the line of argument that says, "Some dude once dismissed an Apple product that turned out to be successful, thus all future dismissals of Apple products are invalid" is still silly, and people should not make posts that are nothing by that quote.
Honestly, here in Anno Domini 2015, I'm not sure that that quote is ever relevant to anything. But if you're going to make an argument that there's some parallel between Malda's sentiment and somebody else, at least, you know, argue it. We can all come up with snide quotes that sort of vaguely involve one of the principles under discussion.
The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong. And doing so on a device that's already touch, and already using swipe-to-scroll, feels twice and wrong and unnecessarily confusing.
I understand the intent and the goal, but the inconsistent use of the crown -- if it's so great, why can I still swipe to scroll at all? -- is a tell. It would have been better to simply detect swipe-to-scroll along the right edge of the bezel (if not along the right side of the frame itself) to effect "scrolling without obscuring".
Four-ways-to-click (crown-click vs tap vs force tap vs tap-and-hold) is an eyebrow-raise-er all its own.
Also: displays should be wider. At fifty- to one-hundred-percent wider the display would be far better for notifications and would make the selection of A/B buttons more clear and precise.
The next time you get a notification on your phone, rest your phone on your wrist, so the notification is displayed roughly where a smartwatch would sit. Ask yourself whether that notification would still "work", if it were crammed into an Apple Watch-sized screen. Some certainly do. More can be made to work alright, if font size were reduced. IME, most simply don't work.
There just isn't enough room to get enough meaningful information onto a screen that size, in a comfortable font size, for me to make good decisions about what can be ignored and what should be addressed.
You can mitigate this problem if you can ignore all messages of a given type (e.g. don't even bother getting email alerts on your wrist). But even if you could do this, it would be better if you didn't have to. A screen that enables better decisions would make for a more useful object.