JIAWEI ZHANG

Samsung Gear S2 is the world’s first round display smart watch with physical bezel interaction. It is Think Tank Team (TTT)'s earliest and also one of the most important contribution to Samsung so far. As the key industrial designer of the whole project, during two years,  I internally designed and proposed over ten design schemes, three had been selected and presented to the executives of Samsungheadquarters, which directly influence the final design of the watch.

The Second-last design scheme

For this design scheme I came up with the idea of  nesting the metal watch body into the loop structure on a single watch strip.  As our casual style design orientation was different from the luxury and business design orientation of headquarters design team, after this presentation the executives decided to develop two versions, Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic, unveil into the market at same time.

The Last design scheme

Although the previous design has earn recognition from headquarters, the loop structure of the watch couldn't pass the reliability test without taking away the hardware space inside watch. So I changed the watch body design and replace the single watch strip with two customizable strips.   

Ring texture design

I also did a series of watch bezel's surface texture designs which helps to indicate the rotatory function meanwhile increase the friction of the bezel surface. These schemes were submitted to HQ as a reference.    

Prototypes

Beside CMF prototyping, I made prototype for mechanical designs and explorations of the watch too. For example, I initiated the idea of using magnets to create detente for the bezel rotation, Designed a rotatory lock for the watch strip buckle and work with a mechanical engineer designed several prototypes of capacitive touch bezel which using vibration of a piezo elements to mimic the detente feedback.

Process