Misfit Vapor
Results
After winning 6 “Best of Show” awards at CES 2017 and being touted as a “credible threat” to Android Wear, Google struck a deal to merge the two interfaces to create Wear OS and give Fossil Group creative input on future development. Numerous features – particularly the curved menu navigation – are still defining elements of Wear OS.
“A Credible Threat to Android Wear”
Task | A Custom GUI
Design a smartwatch operating system and interface from scratch, entirely independent of Google/Wear OS.
Challenges
No prior experience designing for circular displays, smartwatch apps, or full GUIs.
Highlight the new AMOLED display, downplay the large display border.
Create a full suite of smartwatch apps.
Rethink traditional swipe and crown-twist navigation for a circular display.
By approaching this task as a blank canvas with no predetermined operating system to “match,” I was not anchored down by many of the trappings that other early watch GUI’s experienced. This enabled not just a fresh aesthetic approach compared to our competition, but also an immersive circular UX that extended to every aspect of the device.
In order to make the entire interface cohesive and immediately comprehensible, every single app and settings screen was built from scratch to take advantage of the circular display. This required months of wireframing and testing to get right before final graphics could be implemented.
