“Empower the user and personalize”
Smartwatch App Design Guideline
The morning coffee has now the exact milk of preference, amount of foam and flavor shot. The contents on every movie network are capable of displaying only the viewer's favorite genre, year or actress, and he won't even need to type the title in the search box to get to the movie he has in mind.
The overdose of online information makes customization inevitable, and for wearables, every time closer both physically and psychologically to the user, there is no excuse for not being personalized.
But there is a fine line between anticipation and imposition, and working with minimal information, as in wearables, can turn in to a dominating experience where the user is not free nor empowered by the device.
Designers should then remember a basic principle: the user still wants to be asked about his preferences and be allowed to customize his interactions.
Avoid showing everything, think about notifying the user with the right amount of information. Don’t saturate the user.Use user’s history to show information that the user likes and might be useful.
Don’t be afraid to ask the user about what he likes and anticipate without imposing decisions. Let him tell you if he didn’t like something.
Give a range of options for the user to choose from and create their own experience according to their needs and likes. Sometimes show him things a bit out of the box, so he can evolve and find new things we can enjoy.
After buying a product for the first time, users gets notified weeks later of new similar products are shown in the smartwatch.
Learns from biometric data of a connected smart-patch and recommends to see a doctor to verify a possible diabetics.
Create your Watch face based on your needs; gives you the options to add extra functionality, customize colors or even display certain elements that may or may not be necessary for the user.
The app learns from the user’s calendar, email and messages that they have a flight to get to, so it displays a message about this to the user. The user may or may not have had explicitly known when they allowed the app to use their personal information.