Snapping Back to Reality.
When it comes to design, a product has one purpose: it exists to benefit the user, and the product simply cannot stand alone. A user’s experience is not limited to a product interface, and a product must not inhibit the user.
If that is true, why does it feel like products are taking control and enslaving us to technology?
When interacting with our smart phones and tablets, we find ourselves constrained to a set of prescribed movements, re-training our muscle memory while evolving new habits of holding, touching and tapping the product. We have even developed “Iphone Neck”, what we call strains and damage done to our spines due to our bodies excessively hunching over our screens. Think of the last time you dropped your phone on your face while you were scrolling through your newsfeed in bed. Think about the 1 in 4 car accidents caused by smart phones. Undoubtedly, the new generation is interacting with their products and their environments under restricting notions.
S0 how do we gain control of our products and surroundings once again? Or, better yet, how can we better synergize with products to obtain the benefits unlocked by our technological advances?
The Obvious Answer, is Wearables.
In the world of wearables, there is a power of efficiency and capabilities offered to users in their actively busy and engaged lives. Wearables can improve the quality of life for everyone in every aspect making their days a little more rhythmic, a little more harmonious. These gadgets promise help for users with life threatening diseases, allowing monitoring capabilities and even treatment for their demanding illnesses. Wearables will continue to transform personal safety, assisting your late-night walk home, or even equipping people like our army with tracking technology that will help save lives.
Gone will be the “death grip” required to carry devices for fear of losing or dropping the product.
Instead, the device is now secured to a limb or otherwise integrated into or onto one’s anatomy, bringing technology a little beyond your fingertips.
Wearables provide opportunities beyond tapping a screen, using the body and its natural movements to address our needs in an intuitive manner. Tests and studies have shown we are actually ready to integrate technology to the anatomy. However, like most leaps into the unknown, humanity must evolve one step at a time.
We can not go from A to C without a B in between.
In this case, in order to get to C, we must prove to ourselves that technology can be more human. This is why the wearable era will be relevant.
Making Wearables Human.
Although technology seems to advance rather quickly, there is only one problem that is taking a little longer to solve:
Wearables are barely wearable. As wearables become adapted into the consumer market, the biggest challenge will be something designers already face frequently — seamlessly merging the features, functions, and aesthetics — an attempt at merging UX, ID, and now even fashion, which is a seemingly complex perimeter.
In other words, there has been a missing link between the tech and the user; simply, making it more human.
Perhaps the mistake of our approach is going into the process with the perception of the wearable as another device, instead of looking at the product as something personable, approachable, just something that is wearable.
Like many new things, without opportunity for much trial and error, the reigns of creativity remains up in the air. Although in most cases that is a circumstance deemed as positive, there is a dangerous side of it all. As a result, the merger of futuristic-fashion and tech offers a conceptualized world which in reality is not the future. We are left with a chunk of plastic out of an Inspector Gadget film that would create a mockery if worn out in public.
A step in the right direction might be asking ourselves how do we make wearables something beyond strapping multiple screens onto one’s arm? How can we make them an extension to the user without being so literal?
Should they be like jewelry — something with character, noticeable, barely noticeable — or should they just be invisible altogether? How do we make them simply beautiful or seamlessly invisible?
The Answer is not More.
Regardless of the visual approach, the solution should smooth out the rhythm and eliminate the steps and distractions associated with smart gadgets. The overall answer is not more. A product being able to do too much, or sprinkled with too many jewels and colors, can create a world of chaos for the user.
As a product that is worn everyday, wearable designs must be pragmatic, purposeful, and clutter free.
With this approach, users will no longer have to waste majority of their focus and time shifting through unused and unneeded content, or be forced to wear a half-heartedly desired product. And in a dream world, without having to worry about matching their wearables to their existing attire, the devices start to become whole, while being dedicated to certain behaviors or functions. And, in the process of it all, they will hopefully develop a system that rids distractions and teaches users to adapt to their surroundings, rather than focus their attention solely on their gadgets.
A Harmonious System for Successful Participation.
Wearables are devices that act as a gateway to more expansive capabilities and functions; the products that house and deliver these manifestations will become even more significant, yet must remain invisible at the same time. The product is no longer only or just mainly hardware or software, the product is the result of both, the product is a system.
In this case, the hardware must be simple, attractive and appealing as they act as a blank canvas for the portal of digital integration. The exterior shell is the catching point, the eye-candy or desire to wear this product that will help drive participation in the ecosystem
Next, all of the interaction points (UI/UX) of the ecosystem must be just as successfully designed. The content must be curated and easy to use in order for the system to exist, in order for lasting support from consumers.
It is about the UI/UX and ID working in harmony; they must work in reciprocation and brace each other in order for the system to thrive.
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Technology is shrinking, becoming more accessible, and being worn everyday.
The less chaos you have to see, the less you have to touch, and the less devices you must have or wear, the more it can easily be embedded into our daily lives.
It’s time to have a new perspective on tech. The future of wearables must be realized in its approach: wearables must be beautiful, easy to use first — the gizmos and gadgets can come later.
But we must remember this is not a case of “Form over Function”. There seems to be too much function, while the form remains misunderstood. It is about filtering the function and equally balancing out the form to go with it.
With technology’s ubiquity and the inevitability of wearable products, by taking this approach, the wearable actually becomes a step closer to being wearable and will successfully reach more users.