market Context
Once upon a time, the G-Shock was king of the sport watch market. As competitors like Suunto brought advanced features, and big price tags, G-Shock evolved into a sport-fashion watch, banking on its low price and rugged looks.
Rubicon is a sport watch that brings fresh interaction and visual design to a previously stagnant category. Using new technology in a familiar package creates a watch that is at once approachable and impressive.
Once upon a time, the G-Shock was king of the sport watch market. As competitors like Suunto brought advanced features, and big price tags, G-Shock evolved into a sport-fashion watch, banking on its low price and rugged looks.
Currently, sport watch buyers have to choose between paying for features they’ll never use, and buying a brand new wactch with a display stuck in the eighties.
We ask: Why should consumers have to choose between beautiful-but-overkill and fun-but primitive?
Our strategy: Give the ‘dumb’ sportwatch a smart screen. Adding a Sharp dot-matrix LCD screen to a traditional sport watch would offer the usability and visual shine of a smartwatch, without the added complexity or cost.
Unlike the segmented LCDs typical of sport watches, this pixel based screen can be fully reconfigured for different functions or styles.
The ability to use full 24FPS animations makes for more intuitive navigation (and more fun!)
Like a Kindle, the high-contrast display only uses battery when changing the screen, making for better battery life.
The display offers extremely high contrast, making it readable at a glance, even in direct sunlight.
24,000 pixels of shock-resistant, waterproof badassitude
Once the essential feature set was decided, we mapped out the actions within each of those features. This helped visualize the scope of the project, and acted as an ‘ingredient list’ for the wireframe site map.
We examined potential competitors to Rubicon, evaluating their relative strengths and weaknesses. Of particular importance was how each watch allows the user to navigate through its functions.
The list navigation in Nike’s sportwatch is readable and easy to navigate, but at the cost of visual interest.
The horizontal carousel has been the default navigation for digital watches. It only requires a single button to navigate, but offers poor wayfinding for new users.
An icon grid offers good visibility of available options, but is awkward to navigate without a touchscreen.
