Assessing smartwatches for design for repair: insights from a professional repairer

Most existing repairability assessments rely on predefined criteria and scoring systems that evaluate factors such as documentation, tool accessibility, spare parts availability, and ease of disassembly. While these methods enable systematic benchmarking across products, they are conducted under controlled or idealized conditions by manufacturers, engineers, or regulators and do not capture the real challenges professional repairers face.

This study addresses this gap by applying a product ethnography approach, directly observing a professional repairer working on the top five smartwatches in the UK market–Apple, Samsung, Fitbit, Garmin, and Huawei–with a specific focus on harvesting and replacing batteries, screens, and straps, as these are the top three high-wear parts. The repair process was analyzed through task analysis, timing, and interviews with the professional repairer.

This approach enables the identification of nuanced, real-world challenges that scoring-based methods often overlook, providing a deeper understanding of how product design affects practical repairability beyond what theoretical metrics can reveal.

The analysis revealed recurring design barriers, including strong adhesives, fused assemblies, a high number of internal supports, shields, and tapes, and shell designs that require unnecessary screen removal to access batteries. Further challenges arose from nested and dependent design, misleading layouts, minimal alignment or orientation cues, and clusters of small, similar-looking parts that complicate sequencing and reassembly.

Based on these insights, a set of practical design guidelines grounded in real-world repair is proposed to help manufacturers enhance the repairability of future smartwatches and wearables.