Strategic Design Principles

Beacon Chat is an Android application that augments chat messaging with Android wearable technology. The smartphone application uses an Android wear companion app on the user’s smartwatch that allows users to seamlessly send messages or reply to messages through the application without having to take their phone out of their pocket. With smartwatches becoming a relatively new platform to develop for, the power of using it in conjunction with chat messaging has yet to be discovered. During the time working on this project, it was necessary to research the design principles behind Android phones and Android smartwatches. Using the design principles as a guide, designing Beacon Chat’s user interface was a prominent task that required significant time to implement. Since the application is available on two platforms, smartphone and smartwatch, different design strategies had to be used with consideration of the platform’s limitation before incorporating these principles through code when developing Beacon Chat.