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Visualizing Information on Smartwatch Faces: A Review and Design Space

Alaul Islam, Tingying He, Anastasia Bezerianos, Bongshin Lee, Tanja Blascheck, Petra Isenberg

TL;DR

The paper addresses how visualizations can be embedded on smartwatch faces, treating faces as small data dashboards with constrained space and glance-based interaction. It tabulates a systematic review of 358 premium watch faces from Facer across WearOS and Apple, coding components, time displays, data types, hues, decorations, and animations. A four-dimensional design space (Externals, Styles/Themes, Components, Representations) and a taxonomy of data representations (absolute numeric, proportional, temporal, geospatial, etc.) are proposed to guide design and evaluation. The authors discuss practical implications for readability, customization, and platform-specific styling, and they outline a research agenda targeting holistic face design, evolving display technologies, interactivity, and contextual usage beyond health monitoring. This framework provides a foundation for grounding empirical studies and informing developer guidelines for smartwatch face visualizations.

Abstract

We present a systematic review and design space for visualizations on smartwatches and the context in which these visualizations are displayed--smartwatch faces. A smartwatch face is the main smartwatch screen that wearers see when checking the time. Smartwatch faces are small data dashboards that present a variety of data to wearers in a compact form. Yet, the usage context and form factor of smartwatch faces pose unique design challenges for visualization. In this paper, we present an in-depth review and analysis of visualization designs for popular premium smartwatch faces based on their design styles, amount and types of data, as well as visualization styles and encodings they included. From our analysis we derive a design space to provide an overview of the important considerations for new data displays for smartwatch faces and other small displays. Our design space can also serve as inspiration for design choices and grounding of empirical work on smartwatch visualization design. We end with a research agenda that points to open opportunities in this nascent research direction. Supplementary material is available at: https://osf.io/nwy2r/.

Visualizing Information on Smartwatch Faces: A Review and Design Space

TL;DR

The paper addresses how visualizations can be embedded on smartwatch faces, treating faces as small data dashboards with constrained space and glance-based interaction. It tabulates a systematic review of 358 premium watch faces from Facer across WearOS and Apple, coding components, time displays, data types, hues, decorations, and animations. A four-dimensional design space (Externals, Styles/Themes, Components, Representations) and a taxonomy of data representations (absolute numeric, proportional, temporal, geospatial, etc.) are proposed to guide design and evaluation. The authors discuss practical implications for readability, customization, and platform-specific styling, and they outline a research agenda targeting holistic face design, evolving display technologies, interactivity, and contextual usage beyond health monitoring. This framework provides a foundation for grounding empirical studies and informing developer guidelines for smartwatch face visualizations.

Abstract

We present a systematic review and design space for visualizations on smartwatches and the context in which these visualizations are displayed--smartwatch faces. A smartwatch face is the main smartwatch screen that wearers see when checking the time. Smartwatch faces are small data dashboards that present a variety of data to wearers in a compact form. Yet, the usage context and form factor of smartwatch faces pose unique design challenges for visualization. In this paper, we present an in-depth review and analysis of visualization designs for popular premium smartwatch faces based on their design styles, amount and types of data, as well as visualization styles and encodings they included. From our analysis we derive a design space to provide an overview of the important considerations for new data displays for smartwatch faces and other small displays. Our design space can also serve as inspiration for design choices and grounding of empirical work on smartwatch visualization design. We end with a research agenda that points to open opportunities in this nascent research direction. Supplementary material is available at: https://osf.io/nwy2r/.
Paper Structure (23 sections, 7 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 23 sections, 7 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Smartwatch Visualization Challenges
  4. Data Representations on Smartwatch Faces and in Smartwatch Applications
  5. A Systematic Smartwatch Face Review
  6. Data Collection and Analysis
  7. Results
  8. What is Displayed on a Watch Face?
  9. How is the Watch Face Designed?
  10. Design Space
  11. Watch Face External Factors
  12. Styles, Themes, and Topics
  13. Watch Face Components
  14. Watch Face Data Representations
  15. Representations by Data Type
  16. ...and 8 more sections

Figures (7)

  • Figure 1: The dimensions of our smartwatch face design space that can influence visualization design and reading, with examples. Watch face images (a, b, and f) indicate personal fashion preference as a factor; watch face images (c, d, and f) show examples of watch face design styles; and other watch faces (c to h) regions highlighted in magenta color are---a logo (c), a container (d), a screen frame (e), a divider (f), a foreground graphic (g), and a background graphic (h). Figure acknowledgements can be found before the references.
  • Figure 2: The percentage of watch faces (y-axis) corresponding to different numbers of complications (x-axis).
  • Figure 3: The average number (x-axis) of representation types (y-axis) presented on the premium watch faces.
  • Figure 4: Number of watch faces (x-axis) containing graphical decorators (y-axis) found in the current review.
  • Figure 5: Percentage of watch faces (y-axis) with a certain number of hues (x-axis) in the current review.
  • ...and 2 more figures