With the advancement and new features of the watch OS2, different apps can now combine well with Apple Watch. The three primary ways, through which people can interact with an app on apple watch are- by viewing different notifications, accessing information in one glance and interacting with the app itself.
Notifications
The Apple Watch notifications enable communication and quick interactions. In addition, the apple watch notifications are received in two stages- short looks and long looks.
- Short looks– The short look only gives the brief information about the notification and the app that sends it. Furthermore, you need to stay focused on the content of the notifications that you send. For an effectively designed short look notification, keep the titles short and brief but make sure it is easy to understand and the body should include all the detailed information of the notification. In addition to this, make sure you provide only the basic information in the notification title.
- Long looks– The long look provides all the detailed information about the incoming notifications. The long look appears when the user’s wrist is raised, but as soon as the user lowers his wrist, the notifications are automatically dismissed. You can even dismiss it manually. In addition, there are custom designed long looks available that come in dynamic and static versions. The dynamic version allows full access to the content and provides more options to organize the looks of the interface, whereas the static version allows displaying a message along with static text and images.
For long looks, you need to keep few things in mind-
– Add minimum of four custom action buttons
– Provide static as well as an optional dynamic interface
– Use predesigned images or cache images in your dynamic interface
– Design static images in advance and package them with your app
Glances
Glances are the collection of some moments from the user’s favorite application. In other words, glance means to get a quick look at content. For the best glance, you need to keep few things in mind, like-
- Make relevant glances-The content of the glance that you will create should include all the necessary and useful information. You can even use time and location feature to provide more information.
- Provide quick and easy to read content-Always provide content that is easy to understand and read. You can use large fonts, suitable font style, fewer words, images etc. to convey your ideas.
- Left alignment-Prefer using left alignment for all the glance content. This way the glance will look good on the device.
Furthermore, you can also use templates to design and promote a consistent layout. The upper and lower portion of the glance represents the baseline of the content whereas the upper right corner represents the system’s status indicators.
WatchKit Apps
As compared to glances and notifications, the watchkit gives extra detailed information. You can even use this app to display important information and facilitate interactions.
Navigation
The watchkit app uses one or more than one screen therefore the navigation option can be of best use in this case. There are two types of navigation models available- page based and hierarchical. You cannot use both of them in one single app.
- Page based navigation-Every item is displayed on a single page in a page-based navigation. You can swipe horizontally to steer through one page to another.
- Hierarchical navigation- Hierarchical navigation is precisely used for detailed interfaces or to present a list of options. You can even add some new content later and can easily extend your app.
You can help minimizing scrolling with the help of navigation. For example- if you create a page that is long, people will find it difficult to scroll through all the pages and look for the required information whereas if the pages are short, it becomes easy to scroll and people can find all the necessary information easily. Therefore, focus on creating short and relevant pages.
It is always preferred to choose a solo navigation style but you can also use modal sheets in some cases.
Modal sheets
A modal sheet is used to display content and give some choice to the users in response to the selected action. It is a full screen view. At the top- left corner of the modal sheet, you will find a white close button that is used to dismiss the interface.
- You can change the title of the close button if you want. Although, apple watch gives a default title, but you can still change it according to your need.
- Avoid using “back” or “<” in the close button title to avoid any confusion.
- Do not use close button that looks like a page or app title.
- Keep your modal sheet simple. For example- you can avoid using navigation and in addition avoid showing one modal sheet from another.
Handoff
There are times when people want to dig deep into the content. Therefore, handoff component is exclusively designed for Apple watch app to convey more information to the wearer. You can use this unique component by simply swiping on the icon on your ios device.
