RBS / Natwest app for AppleWatch

A new device was coming to market, we’ve only seen pictures and we have no idea about half the features. To design the app, we had to go to a secret location to work with Apple and we can’t tell anyone anything about it. This is the story of the RBS/NatWest app for Apple Watch.

This was one of ‘those’ projects that you don’t get very often or maybe ever. Apple were about to unveil a new platform to the world, the first wearable from Curpertino and everybody was excited. There was also a lot of pressure and a race to get to market. In the world of digital banking which bank was going to have the first AppleWatch app in the App Store. What features should we beeves be putting in an app of this tiny device and how could we differentiate Royal Bank od Scotland from it’s competitors?

Research...?

So normally research is fairly attainable for but a new and different device we had to think out of the box to learn everything we could about this new device. We had an emulator inside of Xcode but we all know how flakey those are and we hadn’t got a real device from Apple. so our thoughts went in two directions. Read all of Apples docs which they had released to understand this product and its affordances and lean on other manufacturers and what they had put out these in terms of wearables to understand the HCI model.

With no actual Apple Watch, we needed to get some feedback as to what the customers might want from a wearable.We showed fake screens on a Samsung Gear Watch and asked a series of questions. Most customers had no idea what the Apple Watch was, or what they wanted.

We focused on the glance, and how people felt about seeing a small visualisation of their money, and looked at simple questions such as ‘how many transactions would you expect to see’ and ‘how do you feel about seeing your available balance at a glance.

Pick your best bits

Don’t just try to port your iPhone app. Some things just don’t work on a small screen with no keypad. The Watch is all about passive interaction. Choose the best moments from the experience and make them available for users to fold into their day

The first version of the watch was REALLY slow so we had to allow for the latency between the watch and the phone, and the phone and the API, which could be as much as much as 10 seconds.

We learned that Notifications were everything. Without them you will struggle to interact with the user on a passive level.

Glances

Glances are nowhere near as important/useful as we thought. Given the limitations of the glance screen, we spent far too much time worrying about it

Visualisations. People had no idea what they meant, and how they related to their money.

Get Cash, the difference

Royal Bank and NatWest had an ace in the hole that we felt was a differentating feature for them and that was Get Cash. Get Cash is a feature when you have lost or forgotten your physical card you can use the app to generate a unique code which you can then input into a cash machine to withdraw funds. Remember this was before Apple Wallet so going out with just your watch and phone you could still get money out if you needed to. This was a key feature of the Royal Bank / NatWest AppleWatch experience.

The results

We delivered one of the first banking apps to appear on the very first AppleWatch, I learnt a lot about the platform, wearables in general and what it’s like to design for an emergent hi profile technology and it will always be one of the most memorable projects i’ve ever worked on.

Say hello to RBS for Apple Watch…