What you need to know
- Apple's VP of Human Interface has shared how the company made its handwashing feature for Apple Watch.
- Alan Dye was speaking on the Monocle on Design podcast.
- He also discussed the Apple Watch's unique typeface and the design language of watch faces.
Apple's VP of Human Interface, Alan Dye, has appeared on the Monocle on Design podcast to discuss Apple Watch.
Speaking with Monocle's David Phelan, Dye appeared in a 16-minute segment of the show earlier this week.
Over the course of the interview, Phelan and Dye discuss Apple's early approach to designing a typeface for Apple Watch, faces, and Apple's new handwashing feature in watchOS 7.
On the show Dye stated:
We had a lot of fun with this one. And it's such a great example of where I think Apple does its best work. So we learned early on, the teams on the AI and ml side have been working really hard to better understand through a number of different inputs, whether that's the microphone, or the motion of your hands was through the accelerometer, whether we could discern whether someone is washing their hands, they figured that out. And we had some great success there. And our job then again, was to think about, okay, how do we create through haptics through what you feel on your wrist, through animations through what you see on the screen, maybe even through sound if you have the sound on your watch, how can we create an experience that I think is fun and enjoyable, but also encourages people to wash their hands for 20 seconds, which we know is such a big deal in terms of reducing the spread of germs and we made the typeface out of these kind of soapy bubbles, and even the countdown sort of bubbles away as you wash your hands. But it's built on that same kind of structure of a lot of the other graphical forms we use throughout the system. And I think it's some of the work that we're most proud of this time around. But also such a good example of how we can really be expressive with this original language that we designed five or six years ago.
The pair also discussed using stripes as part of Apple's watch face design, and the thinking behind collaborations with partners like Hermes or Nike.
The interview Dye is just 16 minutes long, and the podcast is handily broken down into chapters, so you can't miss it. Click here to listen!
