"Fighting for human rights is a noble undertaking, but it’s also extremely dangerous in places where that fight isn't about simply arguing over abstractions. Aware of the very real possibility of campaigners being beaten, kidnapped or murdered, Civil Rights Defenders in Stockholm has launched the Natalia Project. Named after Natalia Estemirova, a human rights activist who was abducted and murdered in Chechnya in 2009, it’s based on an electronic bracelet that sends a pre-programmed text alarm if activated or forcibly removed.
The bracelet is a wireless assault alarm system intended to immediately draw attention to any assaults on human rights activists. The idea is that in the event of an assault, the wearer can send an alert or the alert is automatically sent if the bracelet is removed by force.
Civil Rights Defenders is bit hazy on the technology, which is understandable. However, it did reveal that it uses GPS and GSM technology and that the bracelet is programmed with "individual protocols for security." In addition to the bracelets, the Natalia Project also encourages people to sign up using Twitter or Facebook to receive weekly updates on the project as well as becoming part of a global alert network."
Wearable technology is the next new wave of technology, and it’s bound to drive a lot of the innovation in the consumer electronics industry. We can expect to see a lot more watches, glasses, fitness gadgets, and wristbands in the years to come. But bear in mind that we’re in the “brick phone” phase, or version 1.0, of wearable tech.
In these early days, we’re approaching wearables with a traditional CE mentality--it’s all about making a powerful gadget that we can bolt onto our bodies without considering the new aspects of what it means to wear, rather than carry, something. And if we are not careful, we will be on our way to becoming cyborgs: bolting gadgets onto our bodies will distract, disrupt, and disengage us from others, ultimately degrading our human experience.
The real opportunity is for wearable technology to enhance the human experience by seamlessly integrating the technology into the fabric of our lives. I use “fabric” deliberately, not just as a reference to the world of e-textiles but to the ample set of considerations that encompass our lifestyle. As an inventor and designer of wearable technology for the last decade, I think we need to consider several key building blocks to achieve this.
1. Make it beautiful
Until recently, in the technology industry the idea of aesthetic value was often considered secondary and sometimes controversial. Yet fashion and aesthetics are important when you start wearing the product on your body--it becomes a part of our identity and a mode of self-expression; it evokes certain perceptions in others and starts to define us. That is why beauty is essential to wearables.
Our goal should be to create iconic and timeless forms that are beautiful and help us communicate who we are. In my concept, Modwells, the modular sensors that track your biometrics are like jewels that you can attach to your clothing. Misfit Wearables is taking a similar approach. We also need to take into account the context of the situation--something that we would gladly wear at the gym would not fit in at a cocktail party, so finding the right balance between aesthetics, functionality, and context is key.
One way to achieve beauty is to hide the technology, and an emerging breed of flexible and softer materials is making that easier than ever. I have experimented with stretch sensors in Move, my concept garment that helps people achieve the precision of movement required in Pilates by tracking and adjusting their movements. As with Angella Mackey’s Vega biking jacket, the technology is incorporated in a way that transforms the function into the aesthetic.
Striving for invisibility should not be a goal in and of itself. While invisibility might be preferable for clothes that aim at improving you, if the product’s goal is to change how you interact with others, we have to take into account social norms, personal boundaries, and privacy.
2. Make it peripheral
In the era of wearable technology, we are moving away from interacting with the technology; it interacts with us instead. This is an important paradigm shift--the body becomes the interaction platform: the mouse and the screen.
Up until now, in order to interact with our smartphones or Fuel Band, we’ve had to look at them and start the display. With wearable technology, we can do these things more seamlessly by using the peripheral space to create new interaction models. We can also move beyond our face and arms and use our bodies like the GPS shoes by Dominic Wilcox, which use light to indicate where to go. While they still rely on visual cues and could have used haptic feedback to let you know when to turn right or left, I do think they are a step in the right direction (pun intended).
Beyond receiving information, we can also use the periphery to send signals. (See the diagram at the top of this page.) Zip is a garment that ties the gestures we normally use to interact with our clothing with controls. For example, zipping the jacket adjusts the volume of music. What is important when designing these new interaction models is that we do not simply translate old metaphors from the computer era but consider the context, proximity, and social situations in which these interactions will occur.
3. Make it meaningful
Wearing devices that are always tracking our activity produces a huge amount of data. But, as any Big Data expert would tell you, the question is what we do with all that data. Merely displaying the information, however beautifully we do that, misses the chance to influence positive behavior.
Instead of simply displaying your biometric readings like your heart rate, we can nudge positive behaviors right in the moment. Jawbone Up is doing this nicely: It sends a tiny vibration when you have not moved for a while to remind you to get up. I used this concept in Pulse, the ring that tracks your heart rate. By itself, your heart rate doesn’t really mean anything; you need to know what to do with it. Pulse uses color to indicate when to cool down and when to speed up so that you can stay in the optimal heart-rate zone while working out. The other advantage of using color instead of a number is how readable it is. You can get the information in less than a second, which does not disrupt your workout (again, the importance of periphery).
Meaningful products enable us to do something better. They help us achieve better posture in Pilates, or stay within our optimum exercise zone; they connect us to those we love or empower us to be more responsible, healthier, smarter. To achieve this, we must go beyond the fad of just quantifying ourselves. Instead we should use the data to prompt us to act in a way that makes us healthier, stronger, better--a principle of 21st-century design.
What's next?
Today’s wearable technology products are mainly in the fitness space, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Wearable tech will start permeating many other domains, including medical, entertainment, security, financial, and more. The more pervasive it becomes, the more important it is to advocate for products that are beautiful, peripheral, and meaningful. Only then will wearable technology achieve its full potential to enhance our lives, rather than disrupt, disconnect, and distract us.
Continue reading and also published on FastCompany's Co.Design.
Join me in Austin at SXSW where I will be sharing a vision for what’s next in wearable technology. Here’s a hint: wearable technology represents an entire new era of interaction. It has the potential to change our relationship to technology altogether by making it more discreetly, smartly integrated into our lifestyle, and ultimately, giving us superpowers.
With the plethora of trendy new products like, Google Glasses, iWatches, the smartphone as your fitness coach – wearable technology is on the verge of going beyond media buzz to becoming mainstream. In a few years virtually everyone will be wearing some tech piece on their body. The question is: How do we avoid becoming cyborgs and create new wearable technology experiences that make us more human? Continue reading at Artefactgroup.com
Join me Saturday, March 9 2013 @ 11am at the Radisson Town Lake Hotel in Austin, TX. Click here to register.
Forget about Kinect that limits gestures to a fixed location (i.e., your living room), Myo is a muscle-gesture wristband that is a completely hands-free gesture input devices. This product looks a lot like the muscle-gesture computing that came out of Microsoft Research a few years back. Nonetheless, it's pretty cool.
"In the future we’re all going to be robot-human hybrids with the help of wearable computers. We’ve already seen Google Glass, the search giant’s augmented-reality glasses, and now the latest Y Combinator startup to come out of stealth, Thalmic Labs, is giving us a wrist cuff that will one day control computers, smartphones, gaming consoles, and remote-control devices with simple hand gestures.
Unlike voice-detecting Google Glass, and the camera-powered Kinect and Leap Motion controller, Thalmic Labs is going to the source of your hand and finger gestures – your forearm muscles. “In looking at wearable computers, we realized there are problems with input for augmented-reality devices,” says Thalmic Labs co-founder Stephen Lake. “You can use voice, but no one wants to be sitting on the subway talking to themselves, and cameras can’t follow wherever you go.” Continue reading on Wired.
Textielmuseum Tilburg and designers Kristi Kuusk, Martijn ten Bhömer, and Paula Kassenaar have been exploring "crafted wearables", one of which is a touch sensitive illuminated garment called Tender.
"The world of high-fashion is home to many kinds of unique wearable technologies, but one thing the fashionistas usually have in common is an aversion to touch. After all, the garments are usually one-of-a-kind and were placed on the gaunt model via a combination of safety pins and a lot of luck. In short, if you break it you buy it. So it comes as quite a relief to see one tech-heavy garment coming down the pike that not only encourages touch, it actually requires it.
[This] touch-sensitive illuminated blouse/garment thingie that is going to quite literally brighten your day(sorry.) Tender features conductive surfaces that are beautifully knit and integrated into the garment. Wherever you place hour hand while wearing it a subtle light follows. It’s like your whole body becomes a flashlight of sorts. This is perfect for ladies who like to remain on the cutting edge of fashion, or those who are just afraid of the dark." Continue reading on crunchwear.com
There’s a lot of discussion around how wearable technology impacts our notion of privacy. From our body metrics to data about who we are, where we’ve been and who we know, software and services that use the data can quickly blur the lines.
There are many aspects to privacy, but let’s take photos for instance. Facial recognition is increasingly used online and in real life by law enforcement, social networks, Internet search engines and even for retail marketing purpose. If everyone has a camera and can snap a picture at any time, how can we remain anonymous?
Tokyo’s National Institute scientists created the first Privacy Visor to address this growing concern. The silly-looking glasses could make you invisible to facial recognition technology. One of the scientists, Isao Echizen, said that “essential measures for preventing the invasion of privacy caused by photographs taken in secret and unintentional capture in camera images is now required.” By wearing this “privacy visor”, still in the prototype stage, people can control if they want to be recognized or not.
But what if you’re in a situation where you want your photo to be taken such as at a party or event? So what is the happy medium between remaining anonymous and spontaneously sharing our experiences?
How does it work?
The glasses use near-infrared light sources to disrupt the facial-recognition software without affecting his or her visions. Lights create interferences across key areas needed to identify your face (like eyes or nose). Goggles are connected via a wire to a power battery supply in the pocket.
Would you wear it?
Personally, I wouldn’t. Of course people want to control if, when, and how their image is used. But the design of the Privacy Visor is bulky, awkward, and just plane goofy looking. It’s almost as if it was designed for people to broadcast that they have something to hide since it’s not discreet in any way. What do you think? Would you buy and wear this type of product?
Related concepts
This isn’t the only privacy-focused concept. Adam Harvey created an anti-surveillance clothing line that blocks cell tracking and drones. What are other concepts that help people remain anonymous?
