Hydrate
Additional Component for Apple's watchOS
The next level of healthy behavior feedback on the watch.
design problem. apple watch lacks a key component of daily healthy activity: drinking enough water..
design solution. the addition of a small circle indicating water consumption inside the existing watch activity rings.
I was pondering how the Apple Watch has made my health habits a little more automated, and thus, increased my ability to not only be healthier, but also feel healthier. Part of the magic of Apple's activity rings is that the completion of your goals doesn't feel like a chore. You begin to set up your life to make sure you hit your move and exercise goals, but the stand goal is by far the easiest way to feel more active. Because the stand challenge has such a low barrier of completion, it becomes easier to take breaks to reach your stand goal. Achievable goals that can be completed upon notification seem like a great use case for the Apple Watch. I say Apple should add more of these kinds of goals.
So, I found myself wondering, "does achieving these three goals really reflect how healthy I am?" The obvious absence of nutrition from these goals is understandable, as documenting food consumption is tremendously difficult. But encouraging and documenting the amount of water you consume seems like an easy way to start helping people achieve consumption health goals.
So I offer for consideration: the hydrate goal.
You don't even have to overcomplicate how the goal works. For every hour that your are notified to stand, serve a notification to get a glass of water upon successful completion of the stand challenge. The idea is that if you need to stand up and take a break anyway, it's an ideal time to grab a glass of water. If you accommodate this 8/12 times you are supposed to stand, you achieve the goal.
Verifiability is still problematic, but a combination of user affirmation of the goal and the fact that a cold glass of water will lower your heart rate slightly, combines for a workable verification of goal achievement.The watch uses it's sensors to really document the move and exercise activity rings, and it makes some pretty good assumptions on the stand ring that reflect actuality. Hydrate would be more aligned to the stand goal than the move or the exercise goal, being a less precise reading that simply checks if you initiated healthy behavior.
It would be a nice addition to a feature set that is quickly becoming my favorite part of the Apple Watch experience.