It seems these days that true innovation in the watch industry is few and far between. Often new releases are pulled from the archives of previous releases and given a modern touch. Or alternatively a watch company comes up with a clever idea and then tries to find a suitable problem for it to solve. For a long time this has been the precedent for releases from watch brands both big and small of the last decade and a half.
However, when you start the journey with a clear problem that needs solving, the end result can be truly innovative and in some cases – life changing.
The Sher watch is not your typical “I made a watch small for kids and colourful so they’d be interested “- and then claim that this is being innovative. The origins of this watch are directly connected to the challenges and struggles our children face in being able to tell the time. While this might seem a straight forward part of our upbringing and education, for someone with dyslexia it is most certainly not.
As a father of a daughter who struggles with dyslexia (as well as ADHD) I know first hand the challenges she faces and also how some of the most insignificant changes can make the biggest differences to her. With that in mind I was very keen to get hands on with The Sher watch, and more importantly for my daughter to get hands on with it and find out just what she thought of it.
So what exactly is the Sher Watch?
The Sher watch starts with a 32mm wide and 9.5mm tall metal case with a screw down back and screw down crown , as well as a sapphire crystal up front. These are all the typical ingredients of a well built field watch. Building on this, the Sher watch is water resistant to 100m and comes on a silicone rubber strap – meaning its able to stand up to just about any circumstance or activity that kids might get up to.
Inside, the intentional lack of a date coupled with a quartz movement is spot on – there’s no need for little ones to unscrew the crown periodically to change the date, it doesn’t need winding if its not worn for a while, and its a tougher movement to withstand the knocks and bumps our kids are likely to subject them to.
However the innovation is how the dial presents and communicates time. With a similar visual aesthetic to a roulette wheel, each hour has its own ‘block’ that represents the whole hour. This means that from the very beginning of the hour to the very end of the hour, the hour hand is pointing to that particular block. It therefore carries the ‘meaning’ of the hour right to the end unlike a traditional watch face which only technically points to the hour for a few minutes. The skeletonised hands further allow the wearer to clearly see the colour block through the hand further emphasizing and confirming which hour is being referenced. In exactly the same way, there are larger numerical values every 5 minutes and clearly segmented minute markers. This all leads to a clearly functional and easily readable watch face.
While this might sound counter intuitive to you and I who have spent decades reading time on a traditional watch face, this is immediately helpful to someone learning to read the time, or to someone who may find a traditional watch face confusing. The presence of clear boundaries helps to frame time and bring a sense of logical purpose to reading the time. Not to mention the fact that the whole dial is luminous allowing it to be easily read at night.
The Sher watch comes in a hard travel case to not only protect the watch while in transit but also serve as a useful protective storage pouch for the watch when its not being worn.
Overall this is a fantastic piece of desperately needed innovation. Directly helping our next generation learn and understand time while at the same time not being a typically cheap plastic watch that will end up in a landfill. As a parent I can attest to the frustration of buying my kids things that just don’t last and I for one would certainly prefer spending a little more knowing it has many years of use ahead of it – but still keeping the price of this under £100 helps it remain affordable.
The Sher watch is available now at www.sherwatch.com for £99
Acknowledgement: This article was co-written by my daughter Hannah who has personal experience in living life with dyslexia.
