Apple Watch Product Design: Choose a Segment, Prioritize Features and Define Success

Imagine you are the product manager who owns the Apple Watch. Walk through how you would design it. ```hint Earn a place on the wrist The watch competes with the phone in the same person's pocket. Decide who the design is for and which job the wrist does better than the phone before you list any features. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Am I defining the product from a blank page, or deciding what the next generation of today's watch should change? - Are hardware changes such as sensors, battery and display in scope, or only watchOS software and services? - Should the watch stay an iPhone companion, or is a version that works fully without a paired phone on the table? - Is the goal to win new buyers, get existing owners to wear and use it more, or push further into an area such as health? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal for the watch and how it fits Apple's wider ecosystem of iPhone, Health and services - A chosen user segment with a reason, and the pain points that are specific to a small, always-worn device - A short list of solutions tied to those pain points, prioritized into a first release with what was deferred - Success metrics with one primary metric and guardrails such as battery life and notification fatigue - Risks including health-data privacy, regulatory limits on health claims, and the battery and cost trade-off ### Follow-up Questions - Which of your features would you cut first if it cost the watch a full day of battery life? - How would the design change if the watch had to work without a paired iPhone? - Six months after launch, what would tell you that the segment you chose has actually adopted the design?