Open your eyes to Blink

After being fascinated by everything we saw, we talked to the designers of the website and the watch. You’ll find their interview below where they discuss the kind of design work that the website and the watch had to undergo.

1. First off, what compelled you guys to go into making the Blink watch? And why the name Blink?

We are essentially a bunch of designers, engineers, and creators who like playing with pixels and atoms. Given our love for making stuff, we wanted to build something that could change the way people do things across the globe. At the same time, we wanted to push the boundaries of technology and design innovation across the country by global benchmarks. A watch, being as personal a device as it has been, combined with the myriad things it can do today, was an ideal starting point in our efforts. Hence, we got down to make the Blink watch to exemplify the blend of state-of-the-art technology and watch craftsmanship.

We have always been huge believers in keeping things simple. ‘Blink’, according to us, is the most simple, intuitive and human way of defining a unit of time. As in, who defined what a second is? – The speed of atoms in an experimental set-up? ‘Blink’ is closer to what’s real that way, as we continue to live our lives one blink at a time.

2. What did you want to communicate through the Blink website?

• Interaction: With Blink, there is a lot more to it than what just meets the eye. We have gone about re-imagining the entire interaction for a smaller screen on the wrist. When iPhones came into existence, it defined smartphones purely because of the experience and functionalities it could create on a touch screen device. We felt something like that was lacking with attempted smartwatches today; they seem to be a replication of a phone on the wrist. This idea and effort needed to be communicated on our website.

• Functionality/Applications: Besides having so powerful a device on your wrist (it’s got a 1.2 Ghz processor – that’s 10x of the first desktops we had owned), we needed to let the users get a taste of what all it can do for them. It had to be designed to be practical and useful.

• Technology: Given the competitive space Blink happens to be in, we wanted to highlight its superior technological specifications, and yet at the same time keep it fathomable and relevant for the end user.

• Watch Craftsmanship: Ultimately a watch is a watch. You don’t wear a watch because you just want to see time. You wear a watch because it represents who you are and that sensibility had to be conveyed on the platform.

• Messaging/ Design: Most importantly, we realised that the website is our face for the outer world. They understand Blink by what they get to see on the page. And hence the entire aesthetics of it, the messaging, the design language had to be in sync with our core values, i.e. keeping things simple, meaningful and delightful.

3. In terms of web design, what are the most powerful influences this design has had?

The result is a watch website that is enjoyable for everyone.

4. What was the website design process like for the team?

5. Did you create all the assets for the website in-house or did you take any external help?

6. What were the biggest stumbling blocks to getting this (fantastic) website up and running?

7. The product looks great and I’m not the only one who think so. Blink looks like it has been covered quite a bit by various news sources. Are there any other media avenues you would like Blink to be seen or talked about on?

8. Let’s say a celebrity out there has a look at your website and is convinced that a Blink watch is the perfect thing to suit who they are. What would be the attributes of that person to lead them to this decision?

This is something we keep telling everyone. We could go on and on about the product and it’s features; ergo it has got a 1.2Ghz processor (twice that of most watches out there), 400 x 400 fully circular screen (& it required pushing the boundaries of mechanical engineering to keep it completely round), 1.39 inch AMOLED screen with 16 million colors, Gorilla Glass 3 Top with custom curve and of course, state-of-the-art sensors to detect motion, sound and other activities. Also, we have completely re-imagined the interaction for a watch to make navigation on a smaller screen absolutely effortless and delightful. We have incorporated speech to text, with enough artificial intelligence built-in to enable access to whatever you want in the most contextual and intuitive manner.

But it’s not about any of this. The real idea here is about why we are doing what we are doing!

At the very fundamental level, what we set out to achieve 10 months back was deemed impossible for an Indian start-up (we have plentiful stories on responses from the ecosystem to write about someday). But it was purely the deep love for making products that kept us going to do what we are doing. Building something this complex and in a way that we have been able to (with enough complexity of hardware + software + supply-chain + services) requires a certain amount of insanity and audacity. We are extremely proud of the way it’s been turning out, and feel a sense of gratification in having  pushed a few boundaries and broken a few set notions in the process.

So, with anyone and everyone choosing to own a Blink, she/he then is part representative of this idea of pushing the boundaries in their own respective fields and in their own specific ways. They represent this new thought process for shaking things, breaking things. For having the virtue of being audacious, and might we say, insane.

A boundary pusher is great to endorse this watch

9. If Blink had to described first in one song, then one sentence and finally one word, what would they be?

Song:
“The times, they are a-changin” – Bob Dylan

10. Finally, when will people be getting their first Blink watches?