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.