Never Lose Your Place
Bringing Kibit's reading experience to Apple Watch, perfectly in sync, one swipe away.
Context & Challenge
The challenge
Kibit's core experience lived entirely on the phone: users listened to or read their “kibits” in short sessions throughout the day. Extending that experience to Apple Watch meant designing for a completely different context — no screen real estate for a full library browser, no keyboard, glances instead of sessions — while still feeling like the same product.
The main challenge wasn't visual, it was structural: the watch had to reflect, in real time, exactly where the user had left off on the phone. Progress, chapter, playback position — everything needed to sync seamlessly across devices so the experience felt continuous rather than like two separate apps sharing a name. Beyond sync, the watch also needed its own lightweight navigation, letting users browse, discover, and revisit content natively, without turning to the phone for anything but subscribing.
Objective
The objective
Design a watchOS experience that increased listening time by removing friction from the moments phones aren't convenient — walking, exercising, commuting — while keeping content perfectly in sync with the phone, so users could pick up a kibit on one device and continue it on the other without thinking about it. The experience also needed to give free users a clear, low-friction path to understand and act on premium content directly from the wrist.
The solution
A minimal, glanceable interface
Built around three core states: continue listening, active playback, and switching to reader. The watch mirrors the phone's library and progress automatically, so opening Kibit on the wrist always shows exactly where the user is, whether that session started on the phone or the watch itself. On top of that, premium users get a native browsing layer — Continue, Explore, Bookmarks, and Vistos — navigable by swipe, so the watch works as a self-contained experience rather than a remote control for the phone. Offline states and reconnection flows were designed explicitly, since watch usage skews toward moments with unreliable connectivity.
Role & Responsibilities
Design end to end, across two devices
Flow design
End-to-end flow design — phone-to-watch handoff, sync logic mapping.
UX research
WatchOS interaction patterns and constraints.
User flows
Mapping across both devices.
High-fidelity UI
Player, reader, library, offline states, native navigation for watchOS.
Sync & edge cases
Reconnection, playback conflicts, premium gating.
Process
Two flows, mapped before any screen was designed
The first followed the cross-device handoff: opening a kibit on the phone, continuing it on the watch, playing a chapter, switching to reader mode, and browsing the library or offline states directly on the wrist. This surfaced every sync point that needed a defined state.
The second mapped watch-native navigation for premium users: swiping between Continue, Explore (with recommendations and a “surprise me” entry point), Bookmarks, and Vistos, all designed to work as a self-contained browsing layer without needing the phone. This flow also defined the paywall moment: when a free user reaches premium content on the watch, a blocker explains the restriction and redirects the upgrade action to the phone, since subscription management lives there.
Cross-device handoff flow
Outcome & Design Goals
Switching devices mid-session feels invisible
Shipped a watchOS experience where switching devices mid-session feels invisible to the user.
Zero lag
Zero perceived sync lag between devices.
One-tap toggle
A reader/listen toggle accessible in one tap.
Clear offline handling
Instead of silent failures.
Native browsing layer
Explore, Bookmarks, Vistos — keeps free users engaged and signals the upgrade path clearly.