Designing for Wearables

Preface

Because We Can

We’re at a crossroads right now in terms of wearable devices. On the one hand, we’re still exploring: new technologies are pushing the envelopes of both technical ability and social conventions, reshaping how we understand ourselves and the world around us. On the other hand, we’re beginning to see patterns and we’re seeing the commoditization of certain ideas that have been introduced in only the past couple years. This is a tipping point at which we can look back at products that we’ve been living with, understand the impact of those products in the greater ecosystem of our lives, and reflect on whether those contributions are worth keeping around or whether we are better off doing something else.

I think of this moment as being a wave that we’re surfing. The wave is propelled by the idea of “because we can,” meaning that we figure out how to do something from a technological perspective and introduce a new product to the public as a hypothesis. Because the technology is so new, we really don’t know whether the product will be beneficial or useful, because it’s never existed before. A lot of the time, technologies will be released into the world with a specific use case and prove to not only fail to deliver on the use case, but also to compound the issues, real or invented, that they’re claiming to alleviate. For example, a smartwatch that is touting the ability to simplify your life constantly commands your attention and pulls you out of situations that you’d ...