Episode 5: The Apple Watch is a “hot mess” and other design considerations

The Apple Watch is out, and while Kevin Tofel didn’t wake up early enough to get one, I interview Mark Rolston, the co-founder and chief creative officer at Argo Design, who did, to see what he thinks of his. Rolston is designing the interface for the Peq smart home hub, and discussed how he’s thinking about designing home interfaces on the Apple Watch. We digressed to general design principles, but did focus on the home, voice control and what the Watch does badly. According to Rolston, the Watch is just like me in the mornings — it’s so desperate to fall back asleep it won’t stay awake long enough to deliver notifications.

PEQ Apple Watch Faces

However, aside from the Apple Watch and its design considerations, Kevin and I discussed Google’s mysterious FCC filings for a Bluetooth device, my first test of a Bluetooth light bulb system from Ilumi which didn’t blow my mind, but would blow my budget, and a bit more on the Amazon Echo’s future. I also get excited about the future of digital medicine with Scanadu raising $35 million and letting us know that next year we’ll be able to buy what is essentially a good chunk of Star Trek’s Tricorder device for $199. Listen up for all this and more.

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Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guests: Mark Rolston, co-founder and chief creative officer at Argo Design

  • What is Google’s new Bluetooth device? Kevin and I convince ourselves it’s not a Beacon?
  • The five-minute Ilumi Bluetooth lighting review
  • I’m pretty pumped about the future of connected medicine.
  • The Apple Watch is a “hot mess” and other considerations for app designers
  • Notifications are an issue on the watch, but Apple has nailed taking action

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Stacey Higginbotham

I am a journalist who has covered technology for over a decade at publications such as Fortune, PCMag, Gigaom, The Deal and BusinessWeek.