What is the Future of Wearable Technology?
It seems that a lot of today’s wearable technology is mainly in the fitness space, including the Nike Fuel Band, Jawbone Up, and Fitbit One, to name a few. However, we are starting to see wearable technology start to enter other markets with products like the Google Glasses and technology-embedded clothing. As designers, it is important to ensure this technology doesn’t disrupt or distract us from our lives. We recently came across a couple of good articles on this subject and wanted to share.
Fast Company featured an article, 3 Ways to Make Wearable Tech Actually Wearable, in which the author highlights some key building blocks to achieve this: Make it Beautiful, Make it Peripheral, and Make it Meaningful.
Photo from fastcodesign.com
Core77 also featured an article, Where On the Body is Wearable Technology Going? Plus, a Stylus That Stows On Your Wrist, where they talked about one of the more recent new products in this area (that isn’t fitness-based) from a Hong Kong company called Aeglo that has designed a stylus that turns into a slap bracelet. The product, called Flaxus, was a success on Kickstarter as of last week. We’re not sure how often we would use a product like this, but it would come in handy during cold Chicago winters when you don’t want to take your gloves off to use your touchscreen phone. You can check out their Kickstarter page here to learn a little more about the product.
Photo from kickstarter.com (Flaxus project)
Wearable technology brings a lot of innovation to the consumer electronics industry and there is no doubt we will be seeing a lot more glasses, watches, fitness gadgets, jewelry, and technology-embedded clothing in the coming years. In addition to these products, it will be interesting to see where else wearable technology is incorporated in product design.
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