While iOS 13 will undoubtedly be the main attraction at Apple’s WWDC event this coming June, there’s a good chance we’ll see some interesting developments regarding watchOS as well. Though the initial incarnation of the Apple Watch featured a somewhat clunky design with respect to software, Apple over the years has improved upon the original design tremendously. The 2018 release of watchOS 5 in particular introduced a number of compelling UI changes that improved overall functionality and usability.
We haven’t heard a whole lot about what type of updates we can expect from the next iteration of watchOS, but that didn’t stop Matt Birchler from coming up with some intriguing watchOS 6 concept designs for Apple’s increasingly popular wearable. Though the software Apple releases doesn’t frequently align with concept designs — no matter how intriguing they appear to be — Birchler’s concepts present a number of interesting ideas that are certainly worth taking a look at.
One of the more interesting ideas Birchler has centers on a brand new grid layout for the dock to replace the vertical scrolling system currently in use.
“My proposal,” Birchler writes, “is to convert the dock to a grid system, at least on the Series 4 and newer models. The 44mm model especially has more room than ever, and those pixels could more effectively be used to show full previews of your recently used apps and let you get into them with bigger touch targets.”
Truth be told, the implementation illustrated below looks quite sleek.
All in all, Birchler has a number of interesting ideas for watchOS 6, including sleep tracking functionality (rumored to be in the works) and the ability to keep a watch face on the display indefinitely (via an opt-in toggle, of course). You can check out the full array of his concepts over here.
