Android Wear Design Story
Article Summary
Roman Nurik and Timothy Jordan from Google's Android team designed their first Android Wear app and discovered something surprising: adapting square UIs to round screens took under an hour.
Two Android design advocates at Google challenged themselves to design a contextual walking tour app for the then-new Android Wear platform. They documented their entire process, from initial concept to seeing their designs running on LG G Watch and Moto 360 prototypes, revealing what makes wearable design fundamentally different.
Key Takeaways
- Designed for 140x140 dp screens: only 2-3 pieces of info at a time
- Round adaptation took under 1 hour for all 8 screens
- Context-aware notifications beat traditional app launcher icons on wearables
- Used Android Design Preview tool to mirror mocks directly to prototype devices
Critical Insight
Designing for wearables requires ruthless prioritization of information, but the actual pixel-pushing becomes far easier when you're forced to show only what matters most.
