For this project we were given an open ended brief to design an app made for a smart watch interface. I decided to create a social app for young people going out drinking. In this app, users can track their alcohol consumption as well as their friends locations to ensure a safe night out. My user base would primarily be young women between the ages of 18-25.
My idea for this project came about from my own personal frustrations with going out with friends at night. I have constantly had to keep track of friends who leave early or stray from the group. Having a personal hub where a group can stick together is useful for calming anxieties and keeping people safe. This was my goal as the rise in anti-social behaviour in recent years has left many people, especially young women, feel unsafe when out late at night. I would like to use technology to combat these feelings as best as possible.
I created a brand identity for this app called “Social Sips” and I created ten screens. This project was issued a week before the deadline, challenging me to manage my time effectively to get everything I wanted for this project done.
I started off this project by looking into smartwatches, trying to gain an understanding of how the device worked, as I did not own or ever have used a smartwatch personally. I looked at video demos of how they operated and noted the user experience. I analysed competitor apps made for the smartwatch and noted what they did well, using this to further my own process.
Next I started to sketch out my ideas, beginning to gage what worked well on a small smartwatch screen vs what was better suited for other devices. After deciding on my social sips idea, I moved onto mid-fi’s on Figma. and started developing my brand identity. I created a logo and word mark based on my brand name, and picked out an appropriate colour pallet which reflected that identity, but also was fit for purpose.
(Mid-Fi mock-ups of my sketches)
After I had my visual identity established, I moved onto hi-fi versions on Figma, adding colour, branding and fleshing out my interface so it would work together as a whole product. After this i began to create components and prototype the app.
In the end I was able to achieve an example of a smartwatch app that met the needs of my goals for the concept. This was my first time designing for a watch interface. was much more accustomed to designing for phones and tablets so moving down to this smaller scale was dauting at first, but I really enjoyable challenge. Due to the smaller size, there was many more constraints, such as needed graphics to be bigger and not cramming too much information into the one screen. Discovering this through competitor research was essential. Due to the short timeframe I was unable to fully prototype the app, but I am happy with what I achieved within the deadline.
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