Apple Watch is one of the pretty cool devices from the Apple. Such wearable devices perform even better when they are equipped with well-designed apps. However, the smaller screen size of the device sets up some challenges in front of the app designers to provide best of the watch experiences. In this blog, I will try to get you familiar with the Apple Watch and its visual specifications ideas that will surely help you design the apps for Apple Watch without any flaws.
Know The App Structure
The app structure has to work on three parts:-
- WatchKit App
- A Glance screen
- Notifications
WatchKit App
The WatchKit App is the primary source of view and used to interact with app data. This can be opened from the home screen and can also be accessed through a Glance or Notification.There are only two types of navigation for the WatchKit App i.e. hierarchical and page-based navigation. However, custom navigation can also be programmed for iOS apps, WatchKit Apps are very limited and no customization support is available by now.
While designing a complex app, hierarchical style is prefered as it resembles the most of the iPhone apps. Apple expects user to use the watch as a compliment to the main app but not as the primary app. So, the design objective should be to provide additional features to the iPhone app.
Glance Screen
This is a browsable collection of frequently accessed items and contextually relevant moments from the user’s favorite apps. Generally, glance is an optional element so all the apps do not need to use glances.
Notification
The Apple Watch apps consists of two-stage notifications namely the short-look and the long-look interface.
Ways Of Interaction
App Watch supports two types of interaction:-
- Digital Crown- Users can use the crown when they need to scroll without halting the display, like swiping with the finger. The crown is very well suited for scrolling through long pages.
- Force Touch- The unique feature of Apple Watch includes tap and press. Just like holding on for additional menu. However, while designing, it is important to stay away from multi gesture features as the watch does not support this feature as yet.
Layout Design
The dimension of the Apple watch varies as they are available in two sizes i.e. 38mm and 42mm. The pixel counts to 340×272 in smaller one and 390×312 in case of larger one. However, while designing a layout, you don’t need to provide the different image size as Apple uses relative sizing and spacing features to make best use of the space.
Context Menu
The context menu is capable of displaying up to four actions. Once an action item is tapped, the menu gets dismissed. While designing context menu items, color is not of much importance as the Watch Apps should focus on functionality. The color only defines the shape of the icon as context menu icons are template images.
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