Last month, when Apple unveiled their new watch to the world, my MailChimp mobile teammates and I immediately knew we wanted to build something for it. But we wanted to make it truly useful, not just an app for the sake of having one. New tech toys are fun, but we knew what we made needed utility and purpose. At first, we struggled to find a place in our mobile ecosystem for a wearable app. We set the idea aside, but it kept looming as we worked on other projects. And then, at long last, our path made itself clear.
Watch the widgets
A couple months ago, we released v3.4 of MailChimp’s iOS app that included our new Today widgets. The widgets appear right on your dashboard when you log in, and help you track your latest campaign stats or keep tabs on your list growth at a glance. At some point, it became obvious that it’d be even cooler if it was your wrist you were glancing at. So we got to work.
Schemas and sketches
Based on what we already knew about the Apple Watch, we understood there would be 2 navigation schemas available on its new platform. So we started planning our app there, with long discussions about the merit of each (and plenty of sketching, as you can see). We quickly fell in love with the idea of swiping through paged campaigns, but ultimately felt that limiting each campaign to a single watch face wasn’t feasible. In the end, we landed on a 3-view paged layout for each report and list. To navigate to a new item, you’ll simply bring up the force touch menu and select where you want to go.
Connect the apps
Our next challenge was figuring out how to link the watch app and its iPhone …Read the full story
Source:: Mail Chimp