Two studies show the most & least common things people do with their Apple Watch – and what Apple needs to fix

The average Apple Watch owner interacts with their Watch 60-80 times a day, but most of that usage doesn’t involve anything more than looking at the watch face, checking the time and information displayed in the complications. The least common thing people do on the Watch is read emails.

These are among the findings of two very different studies noted by Fortune. Wristly’s latest update provides a whole raft of data about what people do with their watches, based on a large panel of 1450 owners, but relying on users to estimate their usage. A Stockholm University study took the exact opposite approach, studying a mere dozen owners, but analysing video from wearable cameras to measure what people actually did rather than what they reported … 

In the Wristly study, 96% of panel members said that their most common interaction with the Watch was simply looking at the watchface. Other popular uses were checking Activity progress, responding to a text message, using Siri and checking their heart-rate. The least common activities among those Wristly asked about were using it as a remote and playing a game.

Wristly’s panel also confirmed something I’ve found, having now worn my own Apple Watch in three different seasons: a fifth of owners said that they expected to use their Watch less frequently (or even stop wearing it altogether) when cold and wet weather would mean wearing more layers of clothing, losing the convenience of simply glancing at their wrist.

The Stockholm study broadly supported Wristly’s usage reports, finding that half of all interactions were simply glancing at the watchface (for an average of 3.8 seconds), with checking notifications accounting for a further 23%. Activity-related activities (Activity rings, Workout app, Workout timer) came next, at 11%, with Siri in a fairly distant fourth place, at just 2% of interactions. Reading email came bottom at 0.1%.

The longest interactions were for Maps, where the average time using the app was 46 seconds, followed by the main Apps screen, at 33 seconds – suggesting Apple has some work to do in making it easier to find the desired one.

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Filed under: Apple Watch Tagged: Apple watch, Apple Watch apps, Apple Watch features, Apple Watch statistics, Apple Watch stats, Apple Watch usage, Siri

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