5 Tips to Take Your Mobile App to The Next Level by Optimizing for Wearables
Not long ago wearable çonnected devices were mostly seen in sitcoms and comic strips. However, today they are a serious line of mobile technology that requires even more serious measuring and optimization, in order to enhance consumers’ interactions with wearables.
Looking way back in 2000, we remember the first-ever Bluetooth headset. Such connected gadgets have made huge evolution in the past twenty years to come to devices, such as the infamous smartwatch.
In fact, today the wearable market has grown to be extremely promising. The number of connected wearable devices is expected to jump from 526 million back in 2016 to over 1,1 billion by 2022, while the telecom technology changes from 4G to 5G.
Wearables are one of the most groundbreaking trends in mobile app development in recent years. They have become an extension of our mobile iOS and Android devices. Companies have started preparing for the advancement of implementing them in their business models as well. They are creating wearable technology strategies for mobile apps. This ensures that the business is ready to come out with ones that are optimized for the latest devices.
Wearables possess precious little real estate in terms of screen size and if your app doesn’t respond with customers, they will just make room for another one. How can your brand measure and optimize the customer experience across wearable devices?
Today, smartwatches are the most well-known type of wearables. People tend to choose them more and more due to their functionalities and ease of use. This means that if you have or are planning to develop your mobile app, you’ll have to adapt it to these small connected devices.
Now, let’s get to the point and share our five tips to take your mobile app to the next level by optimizing for wearables:
Define Your Goal
First of all, you need to understand how exactly are people going to use your mobile app if it’s converted into a wearable-friendly form. You have to define its main goal and choose only its most important functions, that help for achieving it, to add in that form.
A bookkeeping app, for instance, would be completely impractical for smartwatch users. Pick those features that would be helpful for them on the go. Such as scanning receipts or accepting payments. You need to understand the immediate needs of your user. Their interactions with wearables are a lot shorter and intuitive than those with a smartphone.
Also, another essential thing to consider when optimizing a mobile app for wearable devices is that stay on the body for long periods of time and notifications that would often be acceptable on a smartphone, would be very annoying on a wearable.
Choose the Right Platform For Your Needs
The right platform for building your wearable device app, highly depends on your requirements. Your best option is to go for a single app that is suitable, easy to use and responsive for every device.
Currently, Apple is the leading smartwatch vendor. This could make you choose iOS when developing an app for wearables. It’s also the easiest choice as it supports fewer devices than Android. However, if your brand’s original mobile app runs on Android only, then your choice is clear. No matter if your requirements and circumstances, if you want your wearable app to be successful, it has to be compatible.
Minimalistic Design for Better User Interface
Don’t overdo your design, trying to attract users. It’s most likely that the complexity will make them choose another, more simple app. Minimalistic app design aims for flexibility across all devices, especially wearables. In fact, 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company, and an overwhelming design is among the top reasons for that.
It’s crucial to create a design that gives functionality priority over everything else. This allows you to reduce the clutter of other screen elements when displayed on wearables. User Interface is a key factor of engaging customers, just like on mobile devices. However, on these small ones, designers are more challenged with the restricted visible space available.
Ease of use is the key objective for wearable mobile apps. Provide simple but valuable functionalities to the end-user. It’s essential to understand the impulsive nature of smartwatch apps. Minimalistic design is what you’d need. Using wearable mobile apps should be as easy as checking the time.
Data Breach
You’ve probably heard the news from a while ago that a fitness tracking app revealed the location of U.S. soldiers in war-torn areas of Syria and Iraq. This brought out the question of our personal security while using wearable devices.
The fact that they collect so much data, even our heart rate, sound disturbing and brings a huge risk of a data breach. However, wearable technology is still at the beginning of its development phase and as with any new products it faces some security challenges. Users are concerned about their sensitive information and developers must do anything possible to ensure their protection.
As wearables are changing many aspects of our lives, organizations should take advantage of the changes and act now by conducting research and presenting solutions to key management before they become the norm in healthcare or a number of other industries.
Testing
No different than mobile apps, performance is a key metric to measure the success of a wearable one. These devices are usually the smaller and restricted version of another device which they depend on. This means that as we already mentioned, they have to be absolutely compatible with other devices.
An app developed for the wearable device should always undergo rigorous testing for all capabilities and functionalities with other devices. What is most important is how the hardware integrates with the software, as well as how smooth this interaction is. The first impression matters a lot when it comes to using wearables.
To ensure their most seamless integration with apps, crowd testing is quite handy in terms of catching bugs (some of which may be unexpected) to ensure they won’t get to the end-user. Eliminating any bugs, before consumers’ actually start interacting with your app is crucial for great user experience.
Wrapping Up
Technology improves faster than we ever expected it to. If you want to have a successful app, you need to make it work seamlessly for all devices. With these 5 tips to take your app to the next level by optimizing it for wearables, you can see what you should focus on when developing your wearable application.
In the rise of wearable devices, you definitely need to include them in your mobile strategy. They are now a natural extension of your regular mobile device. You should make sure to provide the ability of your app’s most important features to be used on wearables’ smaller screens, anywhere on the go.
