Buienradar Apple Watch App

Year

2014

Introduction

Before the Apple Watch even came out, I collaborated with Jordi Bruin (Concept Developer) and Jimmy Arts (iOS Developer) to create an Apple Watch app for Buienradar, the Netherlands’ rain and weather website. We learned all we could about the upcoming tech, following all the updates, mockups and speculations. Jimmy and Jordi got the chance to attend Apple Labs right before the release of the Watch and were able to test the app on the device while we kept in contact. The Buienradar Apple Watch app was the first Dutch Apple Watch app to be released.

The challenge

The biggest challenge was working for a device none of had seen or used yet. We’d been testing out Android Gear to get an idea of how a small screen would work and which interactions were easy to do. The map view with the incoming rain is a unique feature of Buienradar, so we felt it needed to be included to satisfy the user. Subtle animations when building the graph and showing the weather icons brought the app to life. In the end, being able to test ahead of time at Apple Labs was by far the most useful.