Chapter 1. Design Follows Technology
With all disciplines of design, as technology progresses, the restrictions become fewer and fewer until they get to the point at which a wave crashes and thereâs nothing holding you back from making anything you can dream of. Architecture became bolder when steel frames could support nearly any structure architects could dream of without being restricted by the need to cater to gravity to the degree they needed to when building with stone alone. Furniture evolved with advancements in the technology of the materials available to designers, such as fiberglass and bending plywood, as well as technological advancements related to mass manufacturing processes. In graphic design, typefaces became increasingly more complex and detailed as printing technologies evolved to the point that those details could be reproduced accurately, and then it went completely insane when computers removed nearly all graphical restrictions.
Digital Maturity
Wearable technology has been around in one form or another since 17th-century China when someone came up with an abacus that you could wear on your finger. So, whatâs so special about wearable technology at this point in time? Thereâs a reason wearable technology is making a resurgence. Itâs because weâve finally made it to the digital maturity tipping point: the point at which advancements in computing and the supporting infrastructure have lessened the restrictions of the design of technology so that theyâre nearly nonexistent.
Considering that most people use their computers for simple internet-based information recording and retrieval, the gap in capabilities of a laptop and a computer the size of a watch is not very significant, at least from a technical standpoint. Though physical size of the technology is a big part of this advancement, thereâs also the cost of computing, which has fallen to such a degree that this type of technology can proliferate on a major scale. Combine this with the open source hardware movement that is making the tools to create this technology available to a wider range of people. In this section, we go over some of the specific things that happened to advance wearable technology to where it is today.
Integrated Circuits
On a high level, processors work in pretty much the same way they did in the 1950s, when the first silicon chip was invented: a series of switches called transistors that have an on state and an off state control the flow of electrons. These are the 1s (on state) and 0s (off state) that compile into what we see on our computer screens. In 1965, Gordon Moore wrote an article for Electronics magazine in which he predicted that the number of transistors that could fit on to a chip would double every two years.[3] This became known as Mooreâs law (Figure 1-1). Currently, the smallest transistor is down to 14 billionths of a meter wide. Beyond size efficiency, integrated circuits have seen increases in energy efficiency on par with Mooreâs law, which is also very important for computers that canât be plugged in to a power source all the time.
The Internet
The internet is obviously a major contributor to the advancement of wearable technology: the data thatâs retrieved and recorded on a wearable device doesnât need to be stored on the device if it can be stored on a server. The internet is also making Mooreâs law slightly less relevant as a computational speed limit because said computation doesnât need to be done entirely on a local device. An example of this are image recognition programs on Google Glass that take a photograph and immediately upload it to a server for processing instead of trying to do the computation on the device itself.
Cellular Data Networks
Cellular data is the primary access point for untethered wearable devices, whether through a phone or the device itself. 4G LTE cellular data has a maximum speed of 100 megabits per second (MBps) for downloads and 50 MBps for uploads, which is fast enough for most wearable applications.
Open Source
The last major contributor to the perfect storm of wearable computing is the increased level of access to the tools used to create the technology itself. This is primarily due to the open source movement, wherein the source code of software and original designs of devices are made available to the public to reproduce and modify freely. In addition to the designs and technology itself, an incredibly supportive educational community has grown around the open source movement.
The Human Problem
So, weâre now free of limitations with respect to the size of the device, the communication infrastructure, and even access to the production of the technology, but wearable devices are limited by one major thing: humans. Now that weâre free to do whatever we want with technology, we need to figure out how we actually want to move forward. The two main human-related areas are inputâhow we put information into the computerâand outputâhow the computer gives information to us.
Input
There are two high-level types of input for wearable devices. First, thereâs detailed input such as text input or manipulation of objects and menu systems, basically the type of input youâd need to operate a normal desktop computer. Then, thereâs passive input, which refers to things like steps, heart rate, GPS location, ambient noise, and other things that can be collected passively.
Detailed input
Detailed input on wearable devices is difficult, primarily because of the prevalence of the keyboard and mouse. People donât necessarily want to keep using the keyboard and mouse as primary input mechanisms; itâs just that theyâre so dominant that the way we design and think about digital interactions are inevitably stuck in that paradigm. Itâs similar to television in its earliest days, when there just wasnât an established content paradigm for the new medium, so most of the early television shows were just people reading radio scripts. Eventually weâll get to something more appropriate, but it will take a while to turn the ship.
Today, there are a few techniques being tried out in terms of wearable text input. One-handed keyboards (Figure 1-2) were popular in academic circles but are generally considered clunky and difficult to learn. Voice input is getting a lot stronger in terms of recognition, but inevitably comes with some issues such as other people being able to hear what youâre saying and background noise issues. The cleanest method of text input that Iâve seen is actually instructing users to pull out their phones and use them as a temporary keyboard.
Beyond text input, there has been some interesting progress in gestural interfaces, particularly with the Myo Armband (Figure 1-3) from Thalmic Labs, which reads EEG signals from the movement in your arm muscles. Microsoftâs Hololens (Figure 1-4) also uses gestures as a primary input mechanism by targeting an object by looking at it and gesturing toward that object. In addition to gestures, Microsoft released a âclickerâ which is essentially a handheld mouse trackpad to use with the Hololens.
Passive input
Passive input is a lot easier to figure out from a design perspective. Itâs basically a matter of finding indicators of certain behaviors; for example, if the accelerometer on my device is moving in a specific pattern, I can safely assume that itâs an indicator that Iâm walking and each cycle of that pattern is a step.
The most basic example of passive input are fitness trackers. These devices are worn all the time and you donât really interact all that much with them other than swinging your arms around. A more interesting example of passive input comes from MIT Media Lab spinoff Humanyze, which distributes sensor-laden lanyards to the employees of a company itâs working with to analyze where and how social interactions are happening within the companyâs building by tracking the employeesâ location and recording who is speaking when there are conversations happening.
Output
Output is a much easier problem to tackle with wearable devices. Output is divided into active and passive categories. Active output includes things like heads-up displays, screen-based smartwatches, and audio feedback. These are all things that get your attention and inform you of something. Passive output is information thatâs displayed more like dashboards, which are typically self-initiated or even communicate without commanding active attention.
Active output
We see a lot of examples of active output in wearable devices today. These are the types of interactions that require a conscious engagement, such as when you get an email notification on your smartwatch, or a calendar reminder pops up on your Google Glass. Itâs pretty fair to say that most notifications are active outputs, but other non-notification interfaces, such as the display on a Fitbit, are active in the sense that in order to use them, you must actively engage with the device.
Passive output
Passive output is very different from active. Passive outputs are interfaces that might be always on and provide information to us without commanding our full attention. A great example of this is the Lumo Lift (Figure 1-5), a âdigital posture coachâ that vibrates every time you slouch. After a couple hours using the Lift, you get used to it to the point where itâs almost like another senseâyouâre out and about doing things and working on things and you feel that little vibration and you react to it without diverting your attention. Another example of this would be the Withings Activité watches (Figure 1-6) that have a completely passive, always-on interface that you can glimpse out of the corner of your eye without actively thinking about.
The âUsâ Part of Maturity
The other side of the digital maturity coin is that now, with little to no technological restrictions on design, we must decide how we, as a society, want to live with technology. Now that we can do whatever we want, we must determine what it is that we want. Whatâs healthy? What actually improves our lives? This is the part for which human-centered design is most important. Weâve made it through the Wild West days during which we had no idea if something was going to be useful or awful. Now, we need to take a firm look at what exactly is going on, if weâre actually benefiting from technology, and why weâre using that technology.
Moving forward in the design of wearable technologies requires us to be fully aware of the behavior that these devices encourage, good and bad, to provide truly useful services that empower people with more control and awareness in their day-to-day lives. We now have enough information to step back and take an honest look at how people actually use this technology so we can be critical of what weâre putting into the world and be fully aware of the ramifications of introducing these products into peopleâs lives.
[3] Gordon E. Moore, âCramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,â Electronics, April 19, 1965.
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