Lately, Colin and I have been tinkering with microcontrollers and other fancy electronic doodads. We wanted to post an outline of a project and our progress using things we learned in Praxis and since Colin hasn’t done anything since last week when I told him to post it, I’ll do the first one.
So basically, we wanted to create something useable, and what’s more useable than a wristwatch? We will be presenting some requirements for our design and we hope to be able to show some prototypes and working products. In this post, I’ll walk you through some background info on digital wristwatches and why they are important before showing our first draft of requirements.
History
Truly digital watches were made possibly in 1960 by Bolva through the Accutron wristwatch. This watch used a revolutionary time-keeping method, an electronic tuning fork. The watch also boasted transistors instead of mechanical contacts, which improved life expectancy [1]. This watch paved the way for the first truly digital wristwatches.
This is what they used before the first digital wristwatch was made.
The first digital wristwatch prototype was created by the Hamilton Watch Company and Electro-Data in a joint project in 1972. They were inspired from the then-futuristic watches from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in which they helped to design. It used red LED’s to display time, and it was encased in gold which raised its price to $2,100. After a lot of research, Texas Instruments found out that plastic was a whole lot cheaper than gold, so they brought plastic cased watches costing $20 into the market in 1975. As a result of competition, Pulsar lost $6 million and was soon bought out [2]. Prices soon fell even more, and now you can buy a digital wristwatch at the dollar-store (Ironically, the original pulsar watch has now risen to $18,000 [3]).
“I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Now LED’s happened to not be the best choice of display. They used up battery life, and therefore most LED watches incorporated some sort of switch that was pressed to display time. Naturally, the men wearing the watches felt they were too macho for this (It's what Colin said) and decided the idea needed to be phased out. Luckily, LCD’s offered the promise of an energy efficient solution, and the first LCD watch was soon unveiled by Seiko in 1973.
After that, technology progressed in leaps and bounds. Companies began shoving as many features into their digital wristwatches as possible such as tiny TV screens, thermometers, dictionaries, phone dialling capabilities, and voice recognition from between 1982 and 1987 [2].
Every engineer should have a tiny TV on their wristwatch for those slow calculus lectures.
And here lies a problem; digital wristwatches are clearly divided in their ability to do everything, and in their competition for simplicity and elegancy from analogue watches. Both poles of the design of a digital wristwatch are valid, but which design to pursue is a difficult design decision. Colin and I have approached this problem in our thought process. Colin felt that he wanted his digital wristwatch design to be simple and elegant, while I wanted mine to be chocked full of functions. We hope that our metrics will be able to include both design decisions as well as any in between.
Simplicity and complexity are both aesthetically pleasing.
Requirements
The watch should have a visible display and should be both aesthetically pleasing and practical.
Display
Visibility:
The watch should convey information in a clear and concise manor. The time should be visible from at least 30cm away, but the time should not be constantly visible to people 2 classroom seats away to avoid distractions.
The display should also be easy to understand; faster the user can view the time from the watch, the better.
The watch also needs to be visible at night.
Information:
The minimum amount of information allowed is the hours and the minutes. The watch may display more information or compress the minimum information.
Users should be able to change the time.
Aesthetics
Features:
Digital watches are in lower demand than analog watches due to their perceived lack of craftsmanship or complexity. Therefore, the more features or functions the watch, the better.
Simplicity:
Analog watches are aesthetically appealing due to their simplicity. The simpler the watch appear to be, the better. This is defined as the number of visible features and visible user interfaces (displays, buttons). The smaller the number of visible features, the better.
Practicality
Size:
The size of the wristwatch must not be too small or too large. The dimensions of any side of the watch should not exceed the diameter of the wearer’s wrist, and the watch should not be too tall. The watch should be as small as possible.
Durability:
The watch needs to be able to withstand a drop from a meter height without damage. This will simulate falling from a pocket.
The watch should be resistant to rain.
The battery life of the watch should be as long as possible.
Cost:
The lower the cost of the watch, the better.
[1] http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/time_measurement/1963-306.aspx
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A1006534
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