From Google Glass to athletes' suits that record their speed, the age of wearable technology is upon us, writes design expert Oliver Stokes.
Wearable technology is the big buzz area in consumer electronics today. Via rumours of Apple’s curved glass ‘smart watch’, fuelled again by Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent interview at D11 and the vast amount of blog coverage surrounding Google Glass, it's certain that the age of ‘wearables’ is soon to be upon us.
Even with these exciting product concepts there are still many questions to be asked about what the future holds and how consumers will accept the 'new normal' for wearable technology. We’ve all adjusted to the role of the smart phone in our lives, the ‘always on’ feeds of information which are pushed to us from Twitter or Facebook. We’ve all seen the masses stood on train stations gazing through Gorilla Glass screens, revealing the reams of information available to us. ‘Wearables’, however, are set to completely re-programme how we currently see our relationship with information and technology.
Taking Google Glass as arguably the best-resolved incarnation of wearable tech, we can start to see where some of the headline challenges are. Many people have raised the issues surrounding privacy that come from a wearable camera and the possibility that in the future Google could endlessly harvest information through Glass about your location, what you’re looking at, what you’ve just bought etc. Just think of the commercial value of the information that Google’s extensive algorithms could gather from this wealth of data.
But before we ever get to issues of privacy, consumers have to adopt these potential products and in this is perhaps where the greatest and most interesting issues exist. The way we communicate with others through body language and how we want others to perceive us have always been strong drivers for humans, and therefore will be directly impacted by products such as Glass.
Trying to communicate with a device verbally and not being self-conscious is certainly not an easy thing to carry off, even with the greatest confidence. How many of us have ever seen people use Apple’s voice assistant Siri in public? This physical interactive challenge will be where Google and others need to focus if they are to balance the social acceptance (personal image and privacy) with the functional benefit of a wearable product.
Wearable technology is not limited to the morphing of a smart phone into your glasses or watch. Possibly the most exciting future for wearables will come from products that use what some are calling 'Smart textiles' or 'E-textiles'. These materials can measure your heart rate, blood pressure, motion etc all within the construction of the textile, removing the need for a physical 'device'. This vision builds on products such as the Nike Pro TurboSpeed Suit which was used at the London Olympics to help athletes cut through the air more efficiently.
Imagine a future where such a suit is also able to record your speed, motion and biometrics to determine where you lost two-tenths of a second, or that your stride length was too short in the last 20m. This future is not as far away as it seems and self-initiated groups such as the Quantified Self (QS) are pushing forward the boundaries in this area, utilising the growth in sensors to research and develop technologies that monitor your health and behaviour, the communication of the information and applications of use.
Finally, if one considers where such a trend would lead then things start to get more and more like science-fiction. It was not that long ago that a phone always had a cable. We now embrace carrying a phone with us everywhere. If wearable technology and smart textiles continue to push the development of products as seamless systems we wear, then it’s very possible the ultimate future will be all about sub-dermal implants to measure and interact with your body. These ideas are currently largely hypothetical, but given the advances we’ve seen recently in related areas, it could soon become reality.
Oliver Stokes is Principal of Design and Innovation at PDD, a global product and service design and innovation consultancy.
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