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The brand new visible look and performance of watchOS 10 is a welcome change. There was clearly loads of design and engineering effort put into this new interface and the enhancements are tangible for many apps.
Sadly, the app that I take advantage of essentially the most on the Apple Watch has misplaced a lot of its usability, each in performance and accessibility.
I’m speaking in regards to the Timer app.
The workforce designing watchOS clearly is aware of what it’s doing. Utilizing the infinitely massive corners of the Apple Watch show to leverage Fitt’s Legislation exhibits exceptional perception. The brand new gestures, whereas unfamiliar at first, really feel like they are going to be as transformative as when telephones not had House buttons.
The one rationalization I can discover for the Timer’s design regressions is an unfamiliarity with some use instances. Within the following critique, I’ll concentrate on how the watch is used within the kitchen and the way older prospects wrestle with the brand new structure. Options will likely be saved to a minimal: the hassle right here is to be descriptive, not prescriptive.
Historical past
The Timer has been my favourite app because it debuted within the first model of watchOS. It was fundamental: you might solely set one timer and also you needed to do it manually (there have been no presets).
Why was this interface so helpful to me? As a result of I spend loads of time cooking.
My watch turned the right timer. It went with me wherever I used to be making a meal. No extra conditions the place you set a reminder within the kitchen and don’t hear it go off since you are outdoors on the barbecue.
The subsequent model of the Timer added presets for 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, and half-hour together with settings for 1 or 2 hours. This, to me, was the head of its design on watchOS. Why?
These time settings, positioned in a neat grid, supplied all of the performance I wanted. I solely used the primary six timers, however I used them typically.
However extra importantly, the navigation of that magic grid could possibly be performed with out fingers. Any cook dinner can inform you that there are occasions the place raw meals in your fingers is both harmful or messy. Dressing a rooster, gutting a fish, or making meatballs are all occasions the place you’ll not need to contact an Apple Watch.
As a substitute, you’ll navigate together with your nostril.
That’s proper, a capacitive display works with any a part of your physique. I can simply begin a brand new timer or cancel a ringing timer simply by holding it as much as my face. And if you’re cooking, you do that always.
Which ends up in the subsequent interation of the watchOS Timer. The addition of Recents made attending to the 1/3/5/10/15/30 settings more difficult as a result of scrolling together with your nostril is considerably harder. Fortunately, when you positioned the magic grid on the system, going into and out of timers could possibly be performed shortly and simply.
And the efficency of choosing a timer is essential if you end up setting a dozen of them each hour. How can that occur?
Cooking Instances
So now let’s take a look at among the particular issues that cooks want from the Timer app. To provide you an thought of the essential problem, you possibly can ask this easy query:
How lengthy does it take to carmelize an onion?
The proper reply is: “I do not know”. There are too many components concerned:
- How a lot water content material is within the onion?
- How massive is the onion?
- What’s the ambient temperature within the kitchen?
- What sort of pan are you utilizing?
- What’s your present elevation?
What you do know is that it’ll take about quarter-hour for the onion to melt up at a medium warmth. And then you definitely test it. And possibly decrease the warmth and set a timer for 10 minutes. And test it once more. After which most likely do a 3 or 5 minute timer on low warmth a pair occasions. And when that’s performed, you go together with one minute and do your greatest to not burn them. That is how you find yourself setting a dozen timers in an hour.
All cooks have this inherent data: when a recipe says “quarter-hour” you realize meaning “test it at 10 minutes” and go from there. I don’t even belief occasions on frozen pizzas: are you completely certain that your oven temperature is 425º F?
That is precisely why the magic grid within the Timer app is so necessary. It has all of the widespread checkpoints a cook dinner wants. It’s additionally why Recents are a non-feature whereas cooking: after you’ve performed your 5 minute checkpoint and return to Recents you want a timer for one minute however 5, 30, 15, and three are the latest.
One other facet to cooking is that you just’re sometimes in a rush and juggling a number of duties. Setting a timer manually is way faster and safer than counting on Siri. A kitchen additionally tends to be a loud place, with a number of conversations and background music. If Siri doesn’t perceive what you’ve stated, you’re going to finish up with burnt onions.
Rising Older
The challenges of rising older are quite a few, however the one which I wrestle with essentially the most is imaginative and prescient. My eyes suck.
Should you’re a younger designer, you don’t have any thought what’s coming. I didn’t.
It’s widespread for getting older eyes to be affected by presbyopia. The focal difficulties related to this illness means you need to focus extra to learn small textual content. That’s exacerbated when the textual content comprises repeated symbols. The distinction of the textual content towards a background can also be necessary.
In brief, symbols like “01:00” and “10:00” enhance cognitive load as a result of they will’t be learn at a look.
Additionally of be aware: your well being is a a lot larger concern as you get older. You’re reminded of your mortality daily if you wrestle to place in your socks. The Apple Watch’s well being monitoring options develop into important as you enter this stage of your life. I’m assured that Apple has loads of getting older customers for this system.
It’s seemingly that the issues confronted by a big portion of the shopper base aren’t identified by a younger design workforce. I’m hoping this essay will assist with that.
The Comparability
Now that we’ve coated among the particular wants of previous farts and individuals who wish to cook dinner, let’s take a look at how adjustments in watchOS 10 have an effect on each performance and usefulness for these teams.
As we focus on these adjustments, I’ll be referring to the picture beneath which exhibits how issues regarded earlier than (left) and after (proper) the brand new watchOS model:
Performance
The foundation of the issue on watchOS 10 is that setting a timer is now performed in a modal presentation (with a detailed button within the upper-left nook).
Which means no place is maintained between makes use of: the Recents are at all times on the high and have the ordering downside famous above. The magic 1/3/5/10/15/30 grid is simply accessible by scrolling.
The brand new UI is inconceivable to make use of hands-free. Cooks who need to set or change a timer whereas deboning a rooster are out of luck.
This downside could possibly be remedied if the final place within the modal view was maintained as in earlier variations of watchOS. If sustaining the scroll place isn’t attainable, an affordance to take away or collapse Recents would assist by placing the magic 1/3/5/10/15/30 grid on the high of the view.
Moreover, the All Timers record begins with an enormous plus button. This breaks the muscle reminiscence related to 1 minute being within the top-left place – it’s now within the top-right.
In my expertise, including a timer is a uncommon occurance. I’ve performed it twice within the 8 years I’ve owned an Apple Watch. Each had been for laundry: one for a washing cycle and one other for a drying cycle.
Placing the massive plus button on the finish of the record, and nearer to Edit, looks like a greater resolution that makes the record extra readable and acquainted.
Accessibility
While you examine the screenshots of the earlier and present variations you possibly can simply see that watchOS 10 is extra constant. The record can also be shorter as a result of favorites have been folded into All Timers. These are each good issues.
However the consistency works towards me and my failing eyesight. Every little thing seems the identical and it’s troublesome to know the place I’m throughout the record. (Do not forget that you solely seeing 4 of the circles on the watch face: there are factors whereas scrolling the place you possibly can’t know in the event you’re in Recents or All Timers.)
As famous above, differentiating between “01:00” and “10:00” takes extra effort. Not solely is the textual content smaller, however there’s loads of further noise that impacts readability. The textual content in watchOS 9 used “1 MIN” and “10 MIN”, with the numbers offered in an accent colour to emphasise the minutes. It was way more readable.
The necessity for main and trailing zeros to take care of consistency additionally results in a scenario the place timers which can be longer than 59 minutes get smaller textual content that’s more durable to learn. Fortunately, the necessity for a ten hour timer in my life is unlikely, so I don’t need to take care of studying a tiny “10:00:00” and “01:00:00”.
The main and trailing zeros made some sense in watchOS 9’s Favorites and Recents record the place every button’s label aligned properly with its siblings. However with the grid structure in watchOS 10, the necessity for zero padding isn’t needed and simply looks like visible noise.
(Notice that customers with VoiceOver hear “one minute”, not “zero one colon zero zero” or “one minute zero seconds”. Visible noise for regular eyesight must be lowered simply as it’s with the spoken audio.)
My first thought was that these adjustments on watchOS had been an effort to get consistency throughout platforms, particularly with the addition of a number of timers in iOS 17. This doesn’t look like the case:
I’ve additionally puzzled why seconds are proven as part of the usual format on watchOS. I’m certain there are those who set timers for 12 minutes and 34 seconds, however they’re definitely the outliers. When was the final time you had a pizza that wanted 11:45 within the oven or a load of laundry that took 45:11?
Folks suppose in minutes, so decrease their cognitive load by specializing in that unit of time. By doing this, you might enhance accessibility for everybody by utilizing BIGGER NUMBERS on a small display.
(Seconds could possibly be dealt with in a means much like the brand new Modular Extremely watch face. Dimming the trailing seconds would enable somebody to know that “1:23” is one minute and 23 seconds and never one hour and 23 minutes. Once more, minutes are the factor that’s most necessary to individuals.)
In abstract, this can be a uncommon case the place much less consistency would make for a greater and extra accessible consumer interface.
One last accessibility downside within the new Timer app is when one completes. Here’s what you see, each with and with out accessibility options turned on:
The picture on the left has daring textual content turned on with the default textual content dimension. On the fitting, you see what occurs if you make the textual content dimension bigger and enhance the distinction.
The timer size on this display isn’t accessible and can’t be improved with accessibility settings. The dim textual content on a shiny orange background is extremely exhausting for me to learn. I believe the data hierarchy is the foundation of the issue.
“Executed” isn’t crucial factor on this display when you may have a timer that completes: the size of what simply completed is most vital. Folks will know what a shiny orange display and ringing means. They might not know which timer fired, and that may solely be decided by studying “1 MIN” in dimmed out textual content at a a lot smaller dimension.
Whereas counting, the present state of the timer belongs in massive white textual content. When the rely is full, the size of the timer that completed has that very same degree of significance. This significance will increase when you may have a number of timers.
(Complicated timers with comparable lengths is a straightforward factor to do: I practically screwed up two COVID exams at a time once they had been in extraordinarily brief provide. This occurred as a result of I didn’t discover the “5 MIN” and “15 MIN” textual content.)
Not less than the timer textual content within the screenshots above isn’t “01:00”. Please don’t make this constant, too.
Conclusion
I’m actually not trying ahead to the subsequent 12 months with the Timer app. It’s going to be an irritation dozens of occasions daily.
My solely hope is the opposite nice enhancements in watchOS 10, particularly with exercises and exercise monitoring, will make up for it. 🤞
If it’s worthwhile to get in contact with me about any of this, there’s FB13212554. Should you’re a developer who feels equally about these regressions, please dupe this suggestions (it’s a duplicate of this weblog put up). In any other case, you possibly can ship your feedback to Apple immediately.
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