#HTE

An Interesting UX Design Departure for Mechanical Wristwatches

We like seeing designers experimenting with the gradations between two extremes. Take wristwatches, for instance. There are the tried-and-true mechanical ones, which are like wearing little machines on your wrist. Then there are smartwatches, which are like wearing little computers on your wrist. The former does its one job well, while the latter does many complicated tasks well, but requires considerable futzing to set up and maintain.

Recognizing that there are folks who will fall between these two extremes, an international team of designers led by Igor Basargin have designed the What? Watch, which provides the simplicity of a mechanical model with a little something extra in the UX realm. Check this out:

Sure, it’s still up to the user to remember what tasks those greyed-out sections of time represent, but I like the idea that you have a simple and quick way to see the broad strokes of your schedule. I also like that it is represented purely graphically, in a no-nonsense way. And apparently more than 500 Kickstarter backers feel the same way; at press time, the What? Watch had garnered $150,000-plus on a $104,924 goal, and there were still 15 days left to pledge.

The $177 Early Birds are all gone, and buy-in now starts at $265. Surprisingly, turnaround time seems pretty quick; the developers expect it to ship by September of this year.

P.S. I hate when there’s punctuation in the middle of a product name or title. I think a better name would’ve been the Whatch.