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Glances vs complications

I

i0Nic

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 17, 2006
1,456
68
Sydney, Australia
I find that the fewer glances I have the better, I've removed a lot of the default glances like battery, calendar, weather, activity and heartbeat because they can be better accessed via the watchface complications or in the fitness app for heartbeat.

Do you prefer complications for these or glances? Which glances do you have enabled?

Mine are:
- Settings
- Now Playing
- Overcast
- Rewardle
- Lifesum
- Twitterific
- Things
- NYT
 
i0Nic said:
Do you prefer complications for these or glances?
Click to expand...

I prefer no complications. Just a clean watch face. Though I do like notifications at the bottom of the screen. But not ever present, like next appt. Glances seems less obtrusive.
 
I prefer complications, but use glances where there isn't one. I have also removed the duplicates from glances.
 
I'd really like to see Glances get contextual awareness (a la' Googlw Now style).

Example: only show battery glance when under 50%
 
activity, battery, and music are the only glances I use. I have the date and weather in complications.
 
Had to Google "Complications" :eek: Still waiting on my watch so I had no idea.
 
Mascots said:
Why does it matter?
Click to expand...

When I leave for work in the morning I like to reassure myself about the charge level of my watch. I only charge it for about an hour in the morning. Anything between 70% and 80% will almost certainly take me through to the next morning, but I like some headroom.
 
A complication isn't necessarily a good substitute for a glance and vice versa. Complications, glances and apps each provide different levels of details. There's a good reason why Apple designed them the way they are.

Let's take weather for example:

Complication - shows only the current temperature

Glance - shows the current temperature, condition (cloudy, etc.), high and low

App - shows the day's details in a circle

You might just want to know what the condition is in addition to the temperature so you use glance for that. Clicking on the complication takes you to the app which provides too much information at once.

Take calendar as another example:

Complication - shows just the time for your next event (unless you have Utility and Mickey Mouse)

Glance - shows the details for your next event as well as prominently displays the date at the top

App - shows the events for the next several days

It's helpful to have calendar glance smack dap in the middle of glances, so you can quickly swipe down and back up to see what your next event is, rather than the time consuming process of clicking on the complication to go to the app to view the next several days' worth of events then exiting the app.

Additionally, you can skip date as one of the complications as you can simply swipe down to the calendar glance view the date as necessary.
 
dotnet said:
When I leave for work in the morning I like to reassure myself about the charge level of my watch. I only charge it for about an hour in the morning. Anything between 70% and 80% will almost certainly take me through to the next morning, but I like some headroom.
Click to expand...

That's a very isolated example. I find it highly unlikely that if the battery charge is well above 50% an average person will actually set time aside to take the watch off and charge it midday with any consistency.

I'm not advocating against having Glances that stick in that space, either, but if it's important to you it should be there and vice versa. The importance, however, is often determined by context (location, time, people nearby, etc). Battery life was just an example since it is information that isn't relevant to the average person 100% of the time.
 
i0Nic said:
I find that the fewer glances I have the better, I've removed a lot of the default glances like battery, calendar, weather, activity and heartbeat because they can be better accessed via the watchface complications or in the fitness app for heartbeat.

Do you prefer complications for these or glances? Which glances do you have enabled?

Mine are:
- Settings
- Now Playing
- Overcast
- Rewardle
- Lifesum
- Twitterific
- Things
- NYT
Click to expand...

How do you add settings to glance? I don't see settings in the option to add it inside the app list.
 
At first thought, I was like "who at Apple came up with word Complications?," but then I learned that it's a timepiece thing. so nvm.

I prefer to have a clean face. Even with complications, I find myself not paying attention to them. I'd rather use glances for all those things.
 
Mascots said:
That's a very isolated example.
Click to expand...

That is your isolated opinion. The battery status display is not just a recharge reminder, it also serves for planning purposes (do I need to pack the charge cable? etc), and for forecasting (how long will I last at this rate?).
 
dotnet said:
That is your isolated opinion. The battery status display is not just a recharge reminder, it also serves for planning purposes (do I need to pack the charge cable? etc), and for forecasting (how long will I last at this rate?).
Click to expand...

You're really caught up on my suggestion of potentially preventing you from viewing your battery life at 85%. What you gave me is an isolated and specific example of behavior. If you're saying that people (and you) just want to know their battery life level at all indications without justification or scenario, it wouldn't be.

Read the bulk my last post and check out what Google Now (the card UI) does. I'd rather focus on the presentation of content as it becomes relevant to me while allowing your watch to focus on the presentation of content for you. There are Glances I would like to see when I need them, but I don't fancy scrolling through a long list of irrelevant Glances when I just want to see how quickly my battery life is draining when it is low.
 
MasterRyu2011 said:
At first thought, I was like "who at Apple came up with word Complications?," but then I learned that it's a timepiece thing. so nvm.
Click to expand...

See, that's the thing. Apple is using this word from horology. Which further blurs the whole line of what the Watch is supposed to be.

Complications makes sense on a mechanical watch, because each thing you add besides the time is literally a complication to the device. On the Watch, it's just another subroutine, not as quite as dramatic as the addition of multiple gears inside an already cramped watch case.
 
I have zero use for the battery complication or glance. I charge it every night and it lasts until I go to bed. Sure it was useful at first when I was worried it wasn't going to last, but a notification that the battery is about to dead is all I really need now.
 
Mascots said:
I'd rather focus on the presentation of content as it becomes relevant to me while allowing your watch to focus on the presentation of content for you.
Click to expand...

Yes, I get that. Things like that would require a lot of customisation by the user (case in point: you want it this way, I want it another). Do you really want Splunk on your watch?

Tractable UI design design has to make choices on behalf of the user while allowing a modicum of customisation. This is something the entire Android camp with its "endless customisation" philosophy fails to realise, and the reason my friends with their "much better than iPhones" Galaxy S's have no clue whatsoever how do navigate the damn things and use more than 20% of their capabilities.

For now, there is enough customisability to allow you to choose whether you want to access information via a glance, or a complication or both. Allowing users to set thresholds (each piece of information has its own units of measurement of course) for when the information should or should be presented at all would please a very small subset of users but result in UI complexity that would confuse the hell out of the rest. Heck, some people are complaining that the Watch UI is hard to understand as is!
 
dotnet said:
Yes, I get that. Things like that would require a lot of customisation by the user (case in point: you want it this way, I want it another). Do you really want Splunk on your watch?
Click to expand...

Yes, I wouldn't mind going through and fine training controls once on my phone so I don't have to waste time toggling through things that are irrelevant when time is actually of the essence.

But now you're merely sidestepping the entire idea and taking it way too deep! I'm not saying that Glances suck or that Apple should have done it now — all I'm implying is that less but more relevant information is going to be better than submerging you with a lot of potentially irrelevant info on a device like the watch. As far as customization, how it would work, and settings and whatnot, I think with the concept there are a lot of avenues that Apple could explore to fortify that idea. You may be getting too nitty gritty, step out an see the overall picture :)

I promise, exploring the idea is practical.
 
Finding a balance

I prefer fewer Glances, even though I discovered you can "fast" swipe through them if you start the swipe from the rounded edge of the bezel. And, maybe a carousel feature would make it easier to swipe through from the last Glance back to the first Glance.

Because I float between a Complication rich face like Simple and also switch to the Solar face when I want a minimalist look and feel, I try to find a balance between Glances as a substitute for Complications and Complications as a substitute for Glances.

In other words, I commingle these two features to satisfy my watch face tastes.

My Glances:
Settings
Now Playing
Heartbeat
Activity
Battery
RemoteBattery

My Simple face Complications:
Day & Date
Activity
Timer (sometimes switch this out for the Moon because it looks cool)
Weather

P.S. Battery could be on the chopping block since I no longer worry about battery life.
 
i0Nic said:
I find that the fewer glances I have the better, I've removed a lot of the default glances like battery, calendar, weather, activity and heartbeat because they can be better accessed via the watchface complications or in the fitness app for heartbeat.

Do you prefer complications for these or glances? Which glances do you have enabled?

Mine are:
- Settings
- Now Playing
- Overcast
- Rewardle
- Lifesum
- Twitterific
- Things
- NYT
Click to expand...

Only glances I have enabled are:

- Heart rate
- Music controls
- Battery percentage

Complications I always have on watch face when available:

-Weather
-Calendar
-Activity
-stocks
 
Heartrate takes so long to compute it's useless as a glance for me... Do you guys actually sit and wait for it? Or is mine just unusually slow?
 
zmunkz said:
Heartrate takes so long to compute it's useless as a glance for me... Do you guys actually sit and wait for it? Or is mine just unusually slow?
Click to expand...

That's a great point. In fact a more useful glance would be one that shows the historical HR, like you can see in the Health app on the iPhone.

But then again, that is my biggest complaint about most of the glances, they take so long to load, it's useless.
 
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