#vector watch

Flat Vector Watch.

From Antiques to Apple

“I don’t own a watch myself,” a great parting shot by Kevin of Timepiece Antique Clocks in the Liberties, Dublin.

I had popped in one rainy day in November to discover more about clock making and to get an old school perspective on smartwatches. Kevin’s comment made sense. “Why would he need to own a watch?” I asked myself, surrounded by so many wonderful clocks from across the ages, all keeping perfect time.

This made me consider what might influence people to use smartwatches? Such devices offer more than just telling the time.

From antiques to Apple: UX research in the Liberties, Dublin

2015 was very much the year of the smartwatch. The arrival of the Apple Watch earlier in 2015 sparked much press excitement about the user experience (UX) angle. 

Although the Apple Watch retains that initial consumer excitement (at the last count about 7 million units have shipped), we need to bear in mind that the Oracle Applications User Experience cloud strategy is not about one device. The Glance UX framework runs just as well on Pebble and Android Wear devices, for example.

It’s not all about the face. Two exciting devices came my way in 2015 for evaluation against the cloud user experience: The Basis (left) and Vector Watch.

Overall, the interest in wearable tech and what it can do for the enterprise is stronger than ever. Here’s my take on what’s going to be hot and why in 2016 for smartwatch UX.

Trending Beyond Trendy

There were two devices that came my way in 2015 for evaluation that for me captured happening trends in smartwatch user experience.

First there was the Basis Peak (now just Basis). I covered elsewhere my travails in setting up the Basis and how my perseverance eventually paid off.

Basis: The ultimate fitness and sleep tracker. Quantified self heaven for those non-fans of Microsoft Excel and notebooks. Looks great too!

Not only does the Basis look good, but its fitness functionality, range of activity and sleep monitoring “habits,” data gathering, and visualizations matched and thrilled my busy work/life balance. Over the year, the Basis added new features that reflected a more personal quantified self angle (urging users to take a “selfie”) and then acknowledged that fitness fans might be social creatures (or at least in need of friends) by prompting them to share their achievements, or “bragging rights,” to put it the modern way.

Your bragging rights are about to peak: Notifications on Basis (middle).

Second there was the Vector Watch, which came to me by way of a visit to Bucharest. I was given a device to evaluate.

A British design, with development and product operations in Bucharest and Palo Alto too, the Vector looks awesome. The sophisticated, stylish appearance of the watch screams class and quality. It is easily worn by the most fashionable people around and yet packs a mighty user experience.

Vector Watch: Fit executive meets fashion.

I simply love the sleek, subtle, How To Spend It positioning, the range of customized watch faces, notifications integration, activity monitoring capability, and the analytics of the mobile app that it connects with via Bluetooth. Having to charge the watch battery only 12 times (or fewer) each year means one less strand to deal with in my traveling Kabelsalat.

The Vector Watch affordance for notifications is a little quirky, and sure it’s not the Garmin or Suunto that official race pacers or the hardcore fitness types will rely on, and maybe the watch itself could be a little slimmer. But it’s an emerging story, and overall this is the kind of device for me, attracting positive comments from admirers (of the watch, not me) worldwide, from San Francisco to Florence, mostly on its classy looks alone.

I’m so there with the whole #fitexecutive thing.

Perhaps the Vector Watch exposes that qualitative self to match the quantified self needs of our well-being that the Basis delivers on. Regardless, the Vector Watch tells us that wearable tech is coming of age in the fashion sense. Wearable tech has to. These are deeply personal devices, and as such, continue the evolution of wristwatches looking good and functioning well while matching the user’s world and responding to what’s hot in fashion.

Heck, we are now even seeing the re-emergence of pocket watches as tailoring adapts and facilitates their use. Tech innovation keeps time and keeps up, too, and so we have Kickstarter wearabletech solutions for pocket watches appearing, designed for the Apple Watch.

The Three “Fs”

Form and function is a mix that doesn’t always quite gel. Sometimes compromises must be made trying to make great-looking, yet useful, personal technology. Such decisions can shape product adoption. The history of watch making tells us that.

Whereas the “F” of the smartwatch era of 2014–2015 was “Fitness,” it’s now apparent that the “F” that UX pros need to empathize with in 2016 will be “Fashion.” Fashionable technology (#fashtech) in the cloud, the device’s overall style and emotional pull, will be as powerful a driver of adoption as the mere outer form and the inner functionality of the watch.

The Beauty of  UX Strategy

Cloud UX strategy—device neutral that it is—is aware of such trends, and ahead of them even.

The design and delivery of beautiful things has always been at the heart of UX. Watching people use those beautiful things in a satisfied way and hearing them talk passionately about them is a story that every enterprise UX designer and developer wants the bragging rights to.

So, what will we see on the runway in future in this regard?

Stay tuned, fashtechistas!

Update (3-August-2016): A worldwide recall of the Basis was announced today due to a risk of device overheating that may cause skin burns or blisters. Refunds are being offered. On the one hand, it is a shame this has come to pass; on the other, it is another indication that the wearable tech industry is now encountering real customer experience issues that need to be addressed. How Basis handles the next move will be interesting…

I am delighted to say that I was asked by the Vector folks in Bucharest to be one of the judges of the Vector Watch Streams Competition for Developers. 

As I have a big interest, shall we say, in the user experience (UX) of wearable technology, especially for smart watches, I couldn’t wait to see the competition’s entries and what these cloud-based streams of data might offer for UX pros and fashion conscious wearable tech whisperers alike when shown on a watch face. 

(I recently visited Bucharest and the TechHub there for a community event with Vector, and of course, I am a brand ambassador for the Vector Watch too.)

The judges of the Streams competition. I was happy to volunteer my insights as a way of growing user experience interest in the developer community. And where better to do it than with a startup based in Bucharest?

The 10 winning entries have now been announced. The overall winner was Air Pollution from Bogdan B, a stream that displays the air quality data for a selected city on a Vector Watch face. 

The 10 winning entries and overall winner.

In all there were nearly 30 submissions. I evaluated each stream on UX grounds such as usefulness (what problem was it solving?), ease of configuration and glanceability, and by considering how I felt the stream would fit in with the style of the watch itself and the kind of user who would buy and wear it.

Evaluating a Stream (in this case for air quality in London) on my Vector Watch.

The judges were like-minded and my evaluation aligned with that of the other evaluators. I felt that the Air Pollution overall winner and the France Skiing Conditions stream were especially strong contenders.

Streams are added to the watch using the Vector mobile app to first obtain the stream from the Watch Store and then to use the Watch Maker feature to drag the stream onto a configurable watch face that also enables the user to select the options for the information that they want to see on the watch face. 

France Skiing Conditions stream being dropped onto a Vector Watch watch face in the Watch Maker app and options for selecting the skiing resort of choice. 

The competition’s streams are now available on the Vector Watch Store, and I have been enjoying using them myself even though the competition is over - so the motivation for doing this competition has been justified! 

Here’s a couple of streams I have on my Vector Watch at the moment: the overall winner and the French skiing conditions entry:

Air Pollution stream. In this case it’s unhealthy for those sensitive executive types who might be visiting Paris. You have been warned!

France Skiing Conditions stream: You probably might want to wait for a bit more snow at that resort!

What a great competition. I am honored to have been asked to help out by providing an evaluation.

Thank you Vector for asking me to be a judge and for holding his event to fire the imagination of developers, designers, and Vector Watch wearers alike. And well done to all the winners!

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