Good story by David Pierce at Wired on the history of the Apple Watch and the design process at Apple.

The article includes quotes from Kevin Lynch and Alan Dye, plus screenshots of the Apple Watch UI and San Francisco font. This tidbit caught my attention as it suggests Apple tested and discarded a timeline interface – one of the selling points of the Pebble Time.

As the testing went on, it became evident that the key to making the Watch work was speed. An interaction could last only five seconds, 10 at most. They simplified some features and took others out entirely because they just couldn’t be done quickly enough. Lynch and team had to reengineer the Watch’s software twice before it was sufficiently fast. An early version of the software served you information in a timeline, flowing chronologically from top to bottom. That idea never made it off campus; the ideas that will ship on April 24 are focused on streamlining the time it takes a user to figure out whether something is worth paying attention to.