Apple execs say the Apple Watch Series 7 was a ‘unique’ challenge

Source: Rene Ritchie / iMore

There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong with the Apple Watch Series 7.

In a new interview with The Independent (via MacRumors), Stan Ng, Apple’s Vice President of Product Marketing, and Alan Dye, Apple’s Vice President of Interface Design, talked about the design challenges with trying to make the Apple Watch Series 7 a reality.

According to Ng, increasing the size of the display without increasing the size of the watch required the team to “completely re-engineering the display, the front crystal, the internals and the internal enclosure.”

“The re-engineered display on Series 7 is a major technical innovation. Growing the display is such a huge benefit to users, but only if it doesn’t compromise any other part of the experience, such as comfort or aesthetics or battery life or band compatibility.”

Alan Dye said that the increased display size allowed the team to update watchOS to “make the user experience more clear and more accessible.”

“We knew this was an opportunity to optimize the design of the entire experience. So, we went about over the past couple of years reconsidering and recrafting every element, making hundreds of really small but we think important and impactful changes to make the UI to work in harmony with the new display design and making the UI even easier to use.”

The Apple Watch Series 7, which Apple launched in October, features a larger display, tougher glass, and faster charging. You can read the entire interview with Ng and Dye at The Independent.