Apple Watch App Concept
Defining the vision and foundation for Aily’s first smartwatch experience.
Led the initial research, structure, and concept development for an Apple Watch companion app for Aily Labs. The project established the foundation, design flow, and key interaction patterns for future development.
Case Study
As part of Aily Labs’ initiative to expand its product ecosystem to the Apple Watch, I led the early-stage design process — defining the vision, structure, and interaction logic for the app.
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My role involved framing the project goals, organizing the design roadmap, and creating several interface concepts and user flows to explore possible use cases. These early explorations established a clear foundation for the product’s direction and guided subsequent development by another department.
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The outcome was a well-documented concept phase that aligned stakeholders on core design principles and provided a solid base for the next stages of implementation.
Defining the problem
I began the project by defining what success would look like from the user’s perspective. To align the team around this vision, I asked key stakeholders a simple question: “How would the user rate the Watch app after using it?”
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This question sparked discussions about user expectations, core value, and the kind of experience we wanted to deliver — helping shape both the design direction and project priorities.
After defining the desired outcome, my next step was to understand the current landscape. Since there was no existing Apple Watch app, I focused on gathering insights and inspiration to shape the experience.
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I explored best practices for watchOS design, analyzed successful Apple Watch apps across different markets, and conducted brainstorming sessions with key stakeholders to capture their ideal use cases and desired user flows.
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This research phase helped define the app’s functional scope and laid the groundwork for early concepts and design directions.
Customer Journey
To connect the research insights with the user’s real context, I created a customer journey map outlining key moments of interaction between the user and the Apple Watch app.
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The goal was to visualize when and why users would turn to the app — identifying their motivations, pain points, and opportunities to deliver value within short, meaningful interactions.
User Stories
Building on the customer journey insights, I developed storyboards to visualize how users might interact with the Apple Watch app in their everyday context.
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These storyboards helped bring user scenarios to life — illustrating when, where, and why users would engage with key features. They also supported discussions with stakeholders, helping the team quickly align on priorities and ensure that the design focused on moments that truly matter to users.
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This step made the user experience tangible and guided the creation of early design concepts and interaction flows.
The next steps were defined to fit on a tight deadline with a MVP that we could reiterate and keep working and improving with user insights.
Learnings
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Small steps are quicker to implement, and with user insights all changes are real and quick to analyze.
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Starting with a future vision helps leaving details for the later work, and focusing on the general concept.