The smartwatch: I’m sorry, am I interrupting you?
Smartphones, and increasingly smartwatches, are forcing us to rethink what interruption really means: these are devices that more and more of us have on us at all times, making them a part of everyday life.
We’ve grown used to being interrupted by them, and unless we’re in an important meeting few of us disconnect our phones when talking to somebody else: at best we’ll turn the sound off. It’s not really that different to the conventional telephone: when you’re in a meeting and the thing starts ringing, it has to be answered. But most of the time, taking a telephone call is probably not going to help us deal with the conversation it interrupts, making it difficult to prioritize.
It’s not really that different when our phone or smartwatch tells us we’ve just received an email or SMS: it’s quite common to see somebody interrupting what they’re doing to check their device, albeit surreptitiously.
Prioritizing is subject to several factors: obviously, a romantic dinner is not the same as a work meeting, or even the implied hierarchy. In some meetings, for example, we might decide we’re not going to allow any interruptions unless we’re waiting to hear something very important. On other occasions, we close our computer screen or silence our smartphone as a mark of deference, proof that we’re paying attention. Protocols still vary greatly, and take longer to be taken up than the technology needs to be considered mature.
The smartwatch is clearly changing how we think about interruption. It may still be early days, but the device is spreading: everything indicates that Apple Watch sales in the first three months after its launch are higher than comparable iPhone or iPad sales, making it the absolute ruler of a category that other competitors like Fitbit have sold 4.4 million devices over the same period, although strictly speaking they’re not smartwatches per se, because they don’t work with apps, although they have options to notify users about certain events.
Before Apple was able to sell 3.6 million watches in three months, companies like Samsung had reached sales of 600,000 devices since their launch, joining the million sold by Pebble and the 800,000 made by the manufacturers making watches with Android Wear. In one way or another, and leaving overlaps aside, we’re increasingly likely to come across somebody wearing one, or to be wearing one ourselves, meaning we need to give this some thought.
A wrist-worn device needs careful consideration. It’s hard to resist the temptation to check it, even knowing that the gesture can make it look like we’re in a hurry, have somewhere else to be, or are not interested in the person we’re talking to. And allowing your smartphone to interrupt a conversation is going to be taken by most people as discourteous, making us look like we’re novice users. But in the same way that we should avoid constantly interrupting the person we’re talking to by checking our smartwatch, we now live in an age where doing so isn’t a not-very subtle way of saying “I’m in a hurry, get on with it: we’re going to have to get used to the new reality that watches are not just about time telling anymore.
In the same way that it’s absurd to be looking at our wrist every five minutes, so is interpreting this as rudeness. For smartwatch users, the right configuration speaks volumes about your manners and understanding of etiquette.
Establishing how to behave in public when wearing a smartwatch is still very much a work in progress, and it will take time, and greater use of them, before we get it right. Many people who today say that they wouldn’t be seen dead in a smartwatch will probably get round to wearing one as they become more accepted: it was the same with cellphones, and then smartphones. And we should also remember that smartphones have their uses, starting with their ability to monitor our health.
We’re going to have to give some serious thought as to how we will manage the impact of smartwatches in our daily lives. But one thing is clear, how we think and respond to interruption is once again about to be redefined.
(En español, aquí)
