A skunkworks project to make a wearable remote for an insulin pump and glucose sensor, based on an existing LCD driver with limited segment count, led naturally to wondering: what if it were really a watch, that looked and worked like a watch?
In 2006 this was a fairly radical thought, especially the digital crown and repurposing existing analog watch behaviors for everyday control.
The initial impulse behind this project was to use a controller capable of driving a limited number of segments (I think it was around 170 segments) to make a watch-like object.
Along the way I experimented with digital watch-style multi-button control methods as well, but since a working prototype was never made the results were never usability-tested. I did make a non-functional physical prototype much in the manner of an old-school piano practice board.
My role: concepts, interactive specifications, hallway testing with interested employees who were also patients
Lessons learned: there’s no substitute for a prototype of any fidelity, and designing for fixed segments is a much different and more limiting beast than pixel-based displays.