Apple Watch UI

I personally love it, they made a good decision to have a black background to blend with the bezels, and had different colours to make up for the design. I wish iOS had the animations like the watch did.

 

I think #⌚️ UI (and other gimmicks on it) has a heavy influence of the Adobe Flash Dude, Kevin Lynch. (aka The Scapegoat)

 

Assuming that the display is AMOLED and not LCD, it makes sense for the UI to have a darker character. AMOLED screens light up individual pixels, so the black you see isn't backlit. This saves battery life. It also blends seamlessly into the bezel. I think the icons, while round, do a good job at carrying over some design cues from iOS. But the darkness and saturation is a result of AMOLED screen technology.

 

Yes, one almost universally negative comment in the Apple Watch reviews was about the home page with those tiny icons, with no labels.

Compare that to the LG Urbane LTE running a watch version of WebOS, with a launcher that lets the user rotate through a list of apps with names, and with the current icon made biggest to touch:



It almost looks more Apple-like than Apple's own UI.

That said, nothing except folders/regions is going to help much if you were crazy enough to put dozens of apps on board any watch. Except launching by voice control, perhaps, as Android Wear does by default.

 

That is a TERRIBLE UI LMAO. Imagine if LG actually had more than 10 apps on that! Bahahah. You'd literally be running back and forth through it constantly and endlessly just to find the garbage app you want to run. Truly embarrassing.

 

Visually? I think it looks fine. White type on black was the way to go, and the San Fransico font really does appear very legible at such small sizes.

Functionally, I think the Application Launcher needs some serious help. People keep imaging that to be the "home" screen, causing confusion for many reviewers who've spent way too much time there. You should find yourself at the app launcher very, very few times in a regular day.

The clock is "home". The cluster of app icons is not like iOS's home screen, but rather like OS X’s Launch Pad; same basic premise, but a distinct difference. I think visually Apple could have solved all the confusion by having the app icon cluster appear over top of the watch face, which would blur out behind it. Then users would understand why the notifications and glances aren't accessible from the app launcher (because it's on top of them) - and they'd also stop trying to "go home".

 

Seems too complicated for many users, but I like it, I like complicated with lots of options. Now my family and some friends are going to struggle with all the different settings, plus...force touch, pull down, double click button on bottom, click the crown...just too much for many non tech users.

I have to change the time on some people's regular watch, so heaven only knows what I will have to do for them on this.

 

You'd eat your words if you knew what you were talking about.

I'm not a fan of any smartwatch just yet.

But my fellow engineers at work have several Android powered watches. I've seen the LG and it's quite impressive. Personally I've been using two phones for many years. One Android, one iPhone. I've upgraded to the latest model each year. Android phone and watch apps are excellent. Every bit as good as Apple.

Next up is the Apple Watch several guys are buying so we'll have all of them to compare. It'll be interesting.

 

I saw the image before I saw what you wrote about it and I thought you were going to bash it. What a disgusting UI

 

The Watch UI seems like Apple was trying to do too much in a first generation device. I have said this before, and think it is true now more than ever. I think they should have made just the Sport and nailed two or three features. Make a truly amazing fitness/sports watch that had really good support for notifications. If they would have dedicated everything to those two things and not done the stupid heartbeat, drawings, etc., then I think things would work much better. Start small and simple and add as you go. Instead we have what appear to be a bunch of half baked features and apps that aren't ready for primetime and don't really serve much purpose coupled with an awfully complex user interface on a tiny screen.