JUSTIN: Hi, my name is Justin Koh
and I'm an engineer on the Android Wear team.
I'm here today to tell you about how
you can make your app ready for the wrist with Android Wear.
Let's take a look at how developing for Android Wear
is different than developing traditional Android apps.
One key benefit of Android Wear is giving people
the information they need right when they need it.
We realize that your Android device already
does a lot of this through notifications,
so we decided to start by bringing
those same notifications to your wrist.
I'll show you what I mean.
Here I have my Nexus 5.
I've installed the Android Wear preview app on it,
and I've paired it to my emulated device.
I have a small app which creates notifications
with different styles.
Notice how the notification appears on Android
Wear automatically.
I can update the notification, and the changes
are immediately bridged over.
Even better, I can dismiss the notification from my Android
Wear device and it'll disappear from my phone.
This is a really powerful concept.
This means that if your app posts notifications today it's
already on your wrist.
It's worth noting that all of this
is possible thanks to the Notification Listener API
that was added in Android 4.3.
So let's talk about how to get started
developing for Android Wear.
First go to developer.android.com
where you can sign up for the developer preview
and browse the documentation.
You should also download the system image
from the SDK manager to create an Android virtual device
with Android Wear.
Finally, install the Android Wear preview app
and run it on your Android phone that
is connected to your emulator.
At this point you'll have your development environment
set up and ready to go.
Let's look at some code for an app that invites people
to events.
It probably looks really familiar right?
There isn't anything specific to Android Wear here.
I'm just using the NotificationCompat class
from the Android support library to show a notification.
I've also added an action to my notification
so I can tell my app that I'll be attending the event.
This action becomes available on my wrist
so I don't even have to take my phone out
of my pocket to respond.
Instead I just swipe over to the right and tap the action.
That starts a service on the phone
that can add the event to my calendar
and then remove the notification.
Note that I could have used the notification styles introduced
in Android 4.1 such as Big Picture style
to show a photo alongside the notification text.
So that's really cool, but with great power
comes great responsibility.
Automatically bridging notifications to your wrist
means it's extremely important that you
be considerate of when and how you notify the user.
First, note that Android Wear devices will not
vibrate for every notification.
That would get annoying really quickly.
Only notifications which would vibrate or make
a sound on the phone will buzz your wrist.
Next, it's important that notifications
be as contextually relevant as possible.
For example, you can use the API's in Google Play services
to set up a geofence and only post a notification when
the user is at home.
Or you could use the Activity Detection API to only send
notifications when the user is biking.
If you have an app that generates
a lot of notifications, like a chat or email client,
you should give your user control
over when your notifications will make a sound or vibrate.
Finally, you should take advantage of the notification
priority field.
There are several buckets, max, high, default, low, and min.
Setting the proper priority helps
the system show the most relevant information
at the right time.
For more on what makes a good notification
see the design guidelines on developer.android.com.
So that's one way you can begin getting
your app ready for the wrist with Android Wear.
By optimizing your app's notifications
you'll be taking the first step to making
your app more wrist friendly.
There are more API's in the developer preview that
will help you customize notifications
when they appear on Android Wear devices.
So check out the documentation in other DevBytes episodes
for more on that.
And make sure to look at the sample code in the developer
preview and the UX guidelines on developer.android.com.
Thanks and happy coding.