The Apple Watch – designed to be wanted

There's been a lot of press recently about the Apple Watch with divided opinions on whether it will be a success, with the biggest question, as yet, remaining unanswered: why do I need it? In reality, that is a question we have repeatedly asked ourselves with the majority of Apple Products.

Let’s remind ourselves of where design innovation started for Apple – the iMac in 1998

      

 This iMac served a couple of purposes –

• Remind consumers Apple is back
• Be incredibly distinct in a crowded marketplace of beige and grey computers (note how that is very specifically called out in the advertisement above)
• Change user perceptions of a computer as a ‘work only’ device.

The goal of this iMac was strategic – shock a marketplace filled with dreary solutions with something fresh and forward looking.

However the only thing that had changed was the hardware, the surface. Desirability of a well performing product was outweighing the ‘need’ for a higher priced computer. Similar conclusions could be made regarding the first iBook and Powerbook.

In 2000, Apple had another game changer in its new OS, OSX – a beautiful, truly graphical user interface that had some useful features attached but attracted users with its desirability to experience it over their ‘need’ for it. iTunes within OSX set the stage for the iPod in 2001.

The iPod matched ‘I want it’ with ‘I need it’ by highlighting how Apple’s strategy was to drive down the cost of a song by allowing users to store more on their device:

And yes, that was the font Apple was using in 2001!

This consumer rationale coupled with an attractive and NEW way of interacting with a product created a major sweetspot for Apple – form meets function to create the killer invention and transform an industry.

This happened once again in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone to a market saturated with grey business like models. Apple created a demand through sheer ‘I NEED THAT’ pitching of the product.

Remember where the smartphone market was in 2007 before the iPhone – most people were not using one, most didn’t think they needed one, and the current products were squarely aimed at business users. Most folks even balked at the price and waited patiently until they could afford one. But the iPhone fundamentally changed the way we experience email, calling and to some extent, texting. The first iPhone was also a lot more loudly designed than the current one, a way to shock awareness of it in an overstuffed market.

The iPad announcement in 2010 was crucial in its style – while sitting in an armchair on stage, Steve Job browses news, images, videos – to show how the iPad is both a  downtime and work effectiveness tool for the person on the go. By presenting the lifestyle of the executive enjoying a high end product, iPad sold out in droves, mainly to an older market with disposable income hoping to emulate the Apple brand.

So how does the watch fit within this strategy? The presentation is a little trickier, with no real envisioning of how you would use it. There is no ‘lifestyle’ pitch associated with the watch, making It harder for people to imagine them ‘needing’ a watch on a day to day basis. The watch needing to be tethered to a phone is also an issue, as is battery life. I can make calls sure, go for a run, great, but have to carry my phone to get accurate readings? That’s an issue.

So why would anyone buy one? Couple of reasons:

1. It is gorgeously designed. Not many folks will need one but everyone WANTS to experience one. Watch envy will be the new paradigm. In the 50s and 60s, industrial design as a field of expertise was born out of the need to ensure consumers would buy more and more products. Because products lasted so long, industrial designers would use a technique called ‘inbuilt obsolescence’ to ensure consumers would always buy the latest model. This is certainly true of Apple’s product strategy – step 1: get people noticing, step 2: get them buying, and step 3: keep them buying by updating the design and engineering for each iteration.

2. Those comments about why would I need this? It’s too expensive? The battery life? Haven’t these been comments about every new product launch Apple has done?

3. The glances – this is key. A lot of people have commented they have not worn a watch in years, as they refer to their iphone for the time. But now you don’t have to take the phone out of your pocket anymore, or unlock>weather app> look at temperature to see what the weather is like, or know what stock prices are, or news headlines. The glances are paramount in returning user behavior back to simple, natural, gestures.

4. Choosing Christy Turlington, though a little dated as a reference, is a smart choice because she can project the lifestyle – the cross between luxury, fitness and family.

One disconnect in the image is of someone who is running through Africa with an expensive watch! Beautiful and expensive products are very much counter to the conscientiousness of the digital saavy  and 1% adverse millennial. This is why the lower priced models will be a success but the Edition models will be a short fad – gauche display of your wealth is not a current consumer trend.

5. The digital crown could be perceived as unnecessary, but it’s a cool way to explore a new technology with an old metaphor. Think how quaint the iPod wheel looks now.

6. The haptic (touch) feedback is HUGE, bigger than you think. You can now communicate with a person through touch, remotely. Think about that. It’s like tapping someone on the shoulder to say hi without being in the same room. It opens up a new paradigm in experiential design – imagine a watch that taps you when you need to speed up or slow down in your run, or a watch that helps the visually impaired navigate through a city.

7. The ability to know when to speed up, change direction, communicate with others using almost a morse-code technique but in a highly personal way. I don’t think that concept is fully formed yet, but the idea of a touch feedback interface opens up a new area in user experience design.

8. Above all its modularity in its design allows Apple to span the whole watch market from sports to higher end without alienating customer segments (though the Edition may cross over that line). Remember this was essentially the Swatch strategy in the 80s.

Here’s the thing, the iPhone essentially replaced the need for a traditional watch. Now the Watch is looking to reopen that long forgotten market and that’s probably why its tethered to your phone – Apple doesn’t want the Watch to cannibalize the market, in the same way the iPhone 6, being a larger screen, is now taking market share from the iPad.

The one hurdle the watch has is that it does not obviously eliminate or replace an activity to make our lives more efficient – the MacBook replaced clunky hardware, the iPod replaced carrying CD players and needing to change a CD, the IPhone replaced photo albums, desktop email, and a host of other items. The iPad replaced print and arguably created the digital magazine market.

What the watch could replace is the wallet. That certainly is a powerful and compelling NEED – eliminating the wallet and the risk of losing it is definitely a next generation experience and including biometrics and personal identification into the watch is a natural next step in its evolution.

The other thing the Watch does replace is an ergonomic one – never having to take out your phone from your pocket for minor distractions. We will find out how our user adoption with this new product informs further iterations of the Watch.

The watch needs the iPhone to work, and that is a problem.  If I still need my iPhone to go for a run, play music, make calls, scan a boarding pass or access a hotel room then the Watch has yet to replace anything and this could be the Achilles heel in Apple’s strategy. Expect in future versions that tether to be cut. But remember our original reaction to the iPhone – the battery was terrible, the 2G network was a joke, but our desire to try the product got us over those objections. Its that overriding desirability for the Watch that will see more beneficial generations of this product to come.