Monitor
Challenge: Create a smartwatch app with 3 screens at a minimum.
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Time Period: 1 Week
Monitor is a smartwatch app designed for the convenience for parents. It aims to give them a better sense of security and safety by being able to always watch their baby monitor from their wrist.
Research
To begin, I conducted some competitor analysis to get myself familiar with smartwatch apps, as well as looking at what apps were available and how my idea could be different. From mindfulness to health, a lot of apps were established and refined.
Ideation
We partnered up in class to create a mind map of potential ideas. This gave me a great range and widened my thought process. As smartwatch apps are primarily compatibility apps, we focused on what and how the competitors achieve in a small screen.
I had an original idea before this mind map however after some research my idea was too similar to some other products so this exercise helped me develop what would become Monitor.
Sketching
I began sketching with a focus on minimalism as I wanted to ensure I didn’t overcrowd the screen from the start. I used some developer guidelines to go by as this would help me throughout my development. I had wanted to make everything as concise as possible. This meant putting a focus on what mattered most on each screen.
Digital Development
Once I began my digital development, I felt the most important part was the hierarchy as it is a small screen. Once I got this figured out a lot of the rest flowed into one another nicely. I also used Adobe Firefly for my monitor image.
I experimented with some different typefaces, however I found SF compact rounded to be the best fit for my app.
Final Product and Feedback
Overall my final outcome was well received from my peers and my tutor. There were a few minor suggestions to make it better, such as refining the alert screens, resulting in less text along with removing the cancel button as it wasn’t needed. I found this feedback very useful and can say my outcome looks better for it.
Reflection
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While I hadn’t tackled app design in quite a while it did come with some issues, my biggest being changing little aspects of screens after I had already copy and pasted them over, which meant for more manual aligning which makes the whole process extremely tedious. I believe I had to redo the prototyping for my music player around 4 times due to changing little aspects of the first screen and not deciding before I jumped into the other screens. I am glad I did this though as now I have learnt not to do this and have found a suitable and efficient way to design a UI without making my life as difficult.
I did use some basic Figma prototyping tutorials just to get to grasps with everything again as I hadn’t used that feature in a while. I was surprised how quickly I picked everything up again though, it felt more like second nature as time went on creating the app, which can only be a good thing.
I’m really happy with how this project turned out and i’m happy to say I can be proud of it for my first solo app UI, I found it really exciting and found myself initially lost at my computer for hours and hours at a time working on the UI, it became quite addicting and enjoyable overall.