Managing smartwatch notifications through filtering and ambient illumination

The ongoing development of smart, wearable devices opens up a new range of possibilities with respect to human-computer interaction. Recent research has confirmed that smartwatches are primarily used to visualize notifications. However, the limited screen size is at odds with the ever-growing amount of information. Often, explicit interaction is needed to get an overview on the currently available information. We provide an aggregation/filtering approach as well as several displaying concepts based on a self-built, power-efficient smartwatch prototype with twelve full-color LEDs around a low-resolution display. In a user study with twelve participants, we evaluated our concepts, and we conclude with guidelines that could easily be applied to today's smartwatches to provide more expressive notification systems.