Abdel Ibrahim, writing for WatchAware:
Last night while I was out for a drive, I had an incredible realization about the possible benefits of Apple Watch. I was listening to the radio (yes, I do that from time to time), and I was jumping around between channels and changing the volume with my thumb. Just like I always do. But this time, I looked down at the steering wheel and then over to my dashboard, and a thought occurred to me. “Huh,” I said to myself, “that’s interesting. The controls are right down here and right over there.” And then I started to understand the value of having such controls within a few inches of my fingers, even when redundant controls are only a few inches farther away.
Yes! This clicked for me. It’s all about economy of motion, reducing interface friction. Think of the analogy as Apple Watch is to iPhone as little button on your steering wheel is to same control on your car radio.
To me, the steering wheel revelation offers an even more basic level of insight. And that insight has to do with friction. Friction, in nearly every context, is something we’re always trying to get rid of. Anything we can do to make things faster and more efficient is almost always welcomed, especially when it comes to consumer technology. Whether it’s 1-Click ordering at Amazon or self-checkout in Walmart, if there is a faster way to get something done, we’re generally all for it.
A few weeks ago, I posted about Henry Ford’s time/motion studies and their relation to the Apple Watch. Abdel is homing in on the same concept here. These may be small movements, but they turn out to be important when magnified by time.
He showed a flaw in the design of the steering wheel controls. He felt compelled to look at the steering wheel. On my FIAT, the radio controls are on the back of the steering wheel, at my fingertips. No contortions needed to reach the buttons and my eyes stay on the road.
I have a lot of cars and the best ones have radios which fall to my hand and which I can control without looking, purely tactile. Way superior to touch interfaces. The correct interface is not always the “newest”.
I don’t think comparing steering wheel buttons to dash buttons is a valid analogy to a watch and an iPhone you have to retrieve from your pocket/purse. The former has tons less “interface friction” than the latter. As for seeking economy of motion, well, perhaps you should not drive, then. I see drivers every day that cannot corner because they do not wish to move their arms. If moving your arm from the steering wheel to the dash is bothersome, your life has more fundamental issues than the interface of your car radio.
That’s a different experience from what I had with a Chevy Cruze.
Dave,
This insight is interesting, but I think another one is more so:
People keep saying “it’s not so difficult to reach in to my pocket and grab my phone, why would I need a watch when my phone is in my pocket!?!”
If that is true, why are we not all still using pocket watches? As soon as the technology was able to do it, people gravitated to wrist watches because it is just so much better to put something you use a lot in clear and obvious view.
Cell phones are the pocket watches of the early 21st century.
Is it that the watch is in clearer view/easier access, or just that it is not attached to your clothes? People tend to want to look at their watch when their in bed for example, which is not practical for a pocket watch, and a pocket watch requires moving it from one item of clothing to the next each time you change, whereas a wrist watch does not.
Personally, I dumped my watch in favor of a cell phone many years ago, so I’m not sure this analogy works – though a watch that could truly replace my cell phone would better fit your analogy, but otherwise you’re back to carrying two things around, and for the moment at least I prefer one thing which then has to be the iPhone and not the watch.
And then you could look up from your watch just as you run in to the back of the car in front of you. But at least then you’d be able to call for a toe truck with your watch…
Seriously though, many places have laws against using your phone while driving, it will be very interesting to see how they deal with using your watch while driving. Bring on automated cars I say!
This is something I was mulling recently when I realised that Apple Watch is a watch designed to save you time. Think about that as a value proposition for a moment. It saves you time. The most important resource in the world and in fact history. Also, the one resource we all have and are running out of.
It saves you time in a world that does everything it can to waste it.
Apple should take this principle into software, too. It’s super easy to create an entry in the Reminders app with a date/time alarm if you use Siri. It’s way too many clicks and cumbersome if you try to do it by touch. Almost all of their stock apps could use that kind of attention. Why can’t you swipe the album art in music to go forward/back (the Ecoute app is great at that and many other little UI touches). Why don’t they show pictures in your Contacts app and let you click and hold to access basic functions? And so on. I would love to see some attention to the functionality of iOS apps rather than just the look.