How to build Apple Watch apps that make an impact

This post is adapted from How to design WatchKit apps for Apple Watch, a whitepaper on designing for Apple’s first wearable.

Beyond notifications and Glances, which provide immediate access to the most relevant information, are the Watch apps themselves. The Watch-optimized versions of more than 4,000 iOS applications can be arranged into a honeycomb grid of circles that exists just below the watch face, allowing users to pan and zoom with the Digital Crown into the apps they want to use. Watch apps rely heavily on the user’s iPhone—all code execution still happens on the iPhone, and interface transitions are fed to the Watch as individual images—but from a user’s perspective Watch apps exist as self-contained entities unto themselves.

So are Watch apps just scaled-down versions of their iPhone counterparts, resized for a 1.5–inch display? In a word, no—in part because the interface paradigms that make sense for iPhone would be ridiculous on Apple Watch. “Tab views are Apple’s recommended view for iOS apps,” said Epstein, referring to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), “But they don’t really correlate to Watch apps. How would five-tab navigation work when each icon is eight pixels wide?”

For this reason, the HIG makes specific recommendations about app layout on the Apple Watch’s scale. “There are two design paradigms for navigation on Apple Watch,” said Epstein. “The page view—the one with pagination dots at the bottom that lets users swipe horizontally between distinct pages—and the stacked table view—which is a more traditional list of options that are organized into a table.” Of course, some apps have already been more adventurous with layout, mixing and matching the paradigms and inventing entirely new ones. Apple’s own apps sometimes disrupt these guidelines, like the Activity app, which includes both tables and pages in the same view.

“Apple Watch is completely new, and there are a ton of new controls that are really different for some users. Until people get more comfortable with the different paradigms on Apple Watch, it makes sense to stick pretty close to what’s recommended. For certain apps it makes sense to try new things, and maybe Apple will come up with more navigation systems in future versions of Watch OS that are more like the tab view and others. The UX can become more sophisticated as the Apple Watch matures, but usability should be the first priority in the interim.”

So designers have prescribed layouts, limited screen real estate, and very few technical resources to implement animations or creative visuals. How can Watch apps possibly take on the brand identity of their creators with such massive constraints? According to Epstein, there is still ample room to make an impact. “It’s easy to fall back on what’s ‘standard’ because of the guidelines—there’s only one system font, for example, and Apple prescribes a universal black background. But it’s possible to overcome the limitations by working creatively within them.”

Don’t expect users to understand Force Touch right away.

One final consideration is one of Apple Watch’s most unique and potentially confusing interface controls, which is called Force Touch. When users push firmly on the display, Apple Watch recognizes the difference in pressure and presents an overlay of different controls, like preferences or sharing controls. “Force Touch is strange, because it’s not exactly discoverable,” said Epstein. “I’d expect most users to discover Force Touch by mistake. So because not everyone is going to use it right out of the box, and because those controls are not immediately visible on the interface, it’s important to think about what functionality should be reserved for Force Touch.”

In Apple’s apps, the Force Touch menu is reserved for power-user features, like switching media playback to different AirPlay speakers and changing the view for Calendars. Epstein agrees with this approach in principle. “Tons of users won’t know or care about this invisible menu, so it wouldn’t be smart to bury essential app functions in there. If people need a feature to interface with the app, it should appear in the GUI. Force Touch options work best for the extra stuff that more advanced users might be looking for.”