Molecularist

One of the chief reasons I bought an Apple Watch was for Nike Run Club (what used to be called Nike+).[1] But the Nike software’s bugginess and some missed design elements has made Nike Run Club one of the most frustrating pieces of my watch. If Apple Watch is to be the forefront of smartwatches, then they need to whip companies like Nike to make full use of the interaction potential of wrist-based interactive surfaces.

Read on for more.

Surfaces
I got my first smartwatch in 2005. At that time, smartphones were establishing themselves as the convergence point for web, information, media, and social interaction. As I used that smartwatch (also purchased for running), I saw the way a second surface could enhance my phone, provide me with glanceable and immediate information, and allow me to extend my interaction with my phone, which might be in my pocket or in my armband.

Apple Watch as a slave 
Most of the apps on the Apple Watch only use the phone for connectivity. For the most part, they don’t share information back with the phone. They are not an extension of the phone, but a replication. There are apps that do have an awareness of what I have on my phone, though it’s more of a phone to watch sharing rather than a two-way collaboration – the watch is slave to the phone.

For example, if I set an alarm on my watch, it doesn’t show up in the alarm list on my phone. Oddly, if I set an alarm on my phone, it does ring and can be silenced from the watch. And I can control my phone-based music and podcasts from my phone, but I need to start them on my phone.

By the way, I don’t count things like email, texts, reminders, and calendars as being shared between phone and watch. Those things have established synchronizations across all related devices, so I don’t count the use of those on the watch as having anything to do with the phone (though, more on this below).

Nike minus 
Based on my previous experience with running watches and my long time use of Nike+, I had high expectation for Apple’s Nike+ Apple Watch. When it works, it mostly delivers what I want – a glanceable read-out of my run on my wrist, and the ability to pause or end a run without pulling my phone out of the armband.

But the app misses a few key usability features. For starters, the app is flaky, half the time it won’t start on the watch or doesn’t know I started a run on the phone. This is the app itself – in my 10+ years using Nike+, the app always seemed to be designed by marketers, not true product developers. No other app on the phone seems to miss a trick when controlling my phone (albeit, I’ve only seen Apple apps do the remote control).

The app on the watch does know (when it works) that I’ve started a run on my phone and provides running data and the ability to pause and stop the run. But what irks me is that if you start the run on your watch, it does NOT turn on the app on the phone. The phone app does know if you’ve started a run on the watch, because a few times when there were issues, the phone app told me that the watch was also recording a run.[2]

What?

Apple Watch as surface 
What I have always expected from a wrist-based surface is that it be an extension of my phone. I should be able to initiate things on the watch that are reflected on the phone. And vice versa.

For example, if I start a run on my watch, then Nike Run Club on the phone should start and I should have the same experience as if I had initiated the run on my phone.

Also, if I have an app on the phone and on the watch, there should be some way to effect a handoff so I can start one place and continue elsewhere. For example, if I check a calendar entry on the watch, I can then go straight to the entry on my phone for more detail or interaction.

Why does this matter? Divergence.
Gartner, on the eve of the Mobile World Congress, reported the first ever decline in global smartphone shipments. They attribute this, though, to lack of low-cost options, folks holding on to their existing phones longer, and longer upgrade cycles.

But let me suggest this: might it be due to the increasing number of surfaces we now interact with?

The growth of smartphones was characterized by the increasing convergence of computation, data, media, social connections, and attention in smartphones. But in the past years, we’ve slowly diverged, especially with home hubs for music and information, smart devices being spread across the home, smart cars, and, of course, the proliferation of wearables, particularly smartwatches.

We are finally entering into a real ubiquitous computing era, and this is wearing down the smartphone’s central role. As we accumulate a cluster of devices we interact with or own, we need to update our current model of interaction, where everything is a slave to the phone. We need a model where all the devices are aware of each other and share the load; where what we do is handed off between devices as we move to the more appropriate surface or interaction interface. So long as all our devices are slaves to the smartphone, our user experience will be tethered to the phone.

Tellingly, the onboarding process for the Apple Watch basically can be summarized as “Do as I do on my phone.” Can we go beyond that?

Glimpse of how it can be 
In many ways, Apple has made us less focused on the primacy of the smartphones. Apple implemented Handoff between iPhone and Mac, so you can start actions one place and complete elsewhere. iCloud keeps our media, messages, and content synchronized for every device we use, so getting a new device just means signing into your account. (OK, so I’m a bit of an Apple-head)

This divergence beyond the smartphone will force developers to be cleverer as to how we make use of the seams between devices, be more cognizant of the benefits of different surfaces of interaction, and strive for a higher bar of usability across multiple usability challenges and environments.

Exciting, no?

What do you think?

[1] The other chief reason was that I needed a more secure and private notification method.
[2] I can’t stand error messages that know what’s wrong but make me do the corrective action, rather than fixing it themselves.