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Microinteractions can be thought of as small, contained moments within a user interface that revolve around a single task or interaction. These interactions are typically subtle, brief, and often automatic, but they play a crucial role in enhancing the overall user experience by providing feedback, guidance, or acknowledgment to the user. Microinteractions exist in various digital interfaces, including websites, mobile apps, and software applications.
After examining the design brief, I decided to conduct some research by examining Apple watchOS 10 by going to the Apple Store to gain a better understanding of how the interface can be used. While at the Apple Store, I became familiar with Apple's branding, layout, features and functions for the watch. While exploring the watch's interface, I noticed the simplicity and smoothness of the Voice Memos feature. While using the Voice Memos, I noticed that the Watch's interface was different from the Voice Memos interface on the iPhone. For example, the iPhone interface contained more features such as being able to pause the recording, playback the recording and rewind the recording to rerecord. I realized that I could explore one of these additional features for my redesign. I decided my focus would be on creating a Voice Memos microinteraction that would allow users the ability to easily pause their recording.
After playing around with the actual watch interface, I moved onto sketching my thought process. I translated my thoughts into small sketches, doodles and notes within a physical design notebook. By sketching on a physical piece of paper, I am able to quickly capture thoughts and ideas in my head. I sketched out the action of someone using their finger to hold down and release the record button, giving them more control while recording. I also wanted to incorporate visual feedback by having the recording button pulsate red rings, indicating that the recording is in progress.
In order to visualize the user pausing the recording, I sketched out the action of someone using their finger to hold down the button to record, and then releasing the record button to pause. This interaction could potentially give more control to the user while they are recording.
After sketching, I moved onto creating Low-Fidelity wireframes to build out the design of the Voice Memos microinteraction. I wanted to maintain a similar layout to the original design by having the red record button stay at the center of the interface. For my redesign, I created a new feedback design with the red circles pulsating out of the record button to indicate that recording is in progress. I also added a "Pause" and "Play" icon in the center of the red record circle to further convey what mode the user was in.
Within the redesign, I also incorporated a blue stop button to end the voice recording, which lives on the bottom right corner of the interface. After the user is done recording, the new recording would pop up on the intial "start recording" screen.
After discussing and sharing my prototype in class, I realized there were a couple issues with my design based on the feedback given. For example, if the user was recording a long message, they would have to keep holding their finger on the record button. Let's say a user likes to typically talk with their hands. They wouldn't be able to do so because both hands were occupied the user needed to hold down the record button with one of their hands. I understood that there needs to be a way for users to record their message on one hand while the other hand needed to be free to gesture movements. I also received feedback on making the stop button larger and easily identifiable to the user.
