Independent watchOS: principles and practices

For a very long time, Apple Watch was considered to be a device for either people dealing with too many notifications, or a smart remote for the Music app, or a health-centred tracker. Lack of UI components, a terrible way to compose animations, and a strong dependency on an iPhone being present didn’t help as well.

However, with the most recent announcements from Apple, everything might finally change. In this talk I will walk you through the best practices and principles behind designing and developing offline-first and independent watchOS apps, as well as briefly touch a few ideas on Watch App Store search optimization and basic approaches to reduce users’ pain when dealing with wearable devices.