Interaction Design, UX Research, Voice-UI Design

Objective

NPR partnered with Samsung to bring the NPR One experience to the Samsung Gear smartwatch, a wearable that was shipped in tethered and stand-alone (3G) versions.

User Research

With user testing and feedback gathered from NPR’s user community, I uncovered insights into user behaviors and motivations. I created a set of assumptions and verified them with further testing and existing metrics.

UX Strategy & Vision

I created wireframes and task flows to share the vision, design principles and strategy. I evangelized user goals and balanced them with business goals to aid decision making.

Interaction Design

I started by digesting the Samsung design guidelines to get an understanding of platform best practices. I knew I needed a fast, glanceable interface with relatively flat navigation structure. I decided to combine the on-demand audio lists into a single view to streamline navigation.

I wanted to take full advantage of the device’s unique rotating bezel and large circular display. I set the bezel rotation to control both the audio scan and volume control. To keep things simple, the user taps on the timestamp to toggle between audio scan and volume control modes.

NPR One for Samsung Gear launched January 2017

• NPR One Now Available On Samsung Gear S2 and S3 – NPR Extra
• Designing NPR One For Samsung Gear – My post on the NPR Design Blog