Street-savvy readers of a certain age will remember the incongruity of an early rap gig in Ireland: Public Enemy at the Trinity Ball in 1981. Puzzlement at the time over the dinner- plate-sized clock worn around the neck of rapper Flavor Flav (a symbol for the preciousness of time) resonates with current public bewilderment at the bizarre fashion sense of wearable technology.
Wearable tech is a catch-all category for smart personal technology worn or carried about the body, connecting with other devices to automate or augment activities, while detecting, measuring and communicating information at a glance in real time through tiny sensors, cameras, voice functionality, GPS, and more.
Wearable-tech start-ups abound in Silicon Valley. Smart watches, fitness bands, heads-up displays and other device ideas are everywhere. They take advantage of Bluetooth low-energy capability, long-life batteries and on-board contextual sensors to tell us how we’re living our lives, how fit we are, or if that something or someone of interest is nearby.
It’s common to see fitness bands on wrists in the Valley, with often several worn by the same person (I sport a Fitbit Flex, Misfit Shine, Pebble and Tikker). The Quantified Self (QS) movement (Wikipedia defines it as “self-knowledge through self-tracking with technology”) is burgeoning in the Valley, too, leveraging all that wearable tech can measure.
I attended a QS meetup in Redwood City recently. Almost 1,000 people turned up, pitching ventures such as runners that measure activity and tell you when they’re worn out, measurements of calorie intake and activities, and even complex biometrics like mood detection.
Perhaps it's a logical progression for people in California, who are obsessed with therapy or the gym, to transition to apps that measure the minutiae of their lifestyle and let them tweet it to others.
Fitness and sport Wearable consumer-tech options are dominated by fitness, sport and personal-health use cases. But innovation goes much further. A casual browse of Kickstarter (recently launched in Ireland) reveals fascinating projects, from the fashion-conscious Elemoon notifications bracelet to an open-source brain-controlled computer interface .
The Nod ring (hellonod.com) is a kind of gesture controller meets "my precious"; there are patents filed for smart wigs and smart tattoos by Sony and Motorola; the Nymi uses cardiac rhythms for identity security; gym clothes detect electrical activity in muscles and advise on ideal workout styles, and so on. And, of course, no self-respecting Valley geek can be seen without Necomimi (necomimi.com) brainwave cat ears, worn in an "oh-so ironic" way.
Retail revenue from smart wearable devices, including smart watches and glasses, is predicted to reach $19 billion (€14.7 billion) by 2018.
The wearable tech trend to watch is smart watches. The launch of the Apple Watch and Motorola's Moto 360, built using Google Android Wear technology, heightens interest already whetted by the Kickstarter-funded Pebble smart watch.
Smart watches are unobtrusive and glanceable. They’re part of an evolution from sundials, to clocks on towers, to pocket watches, to wristwatches, to a time when many stopped wearing a watch at all. Yet most commentators miss the key promise of smart watches. They’re as much about telling the time as iPhones are about making phone calls. Apps, notifications, instant messaging and ubiquitous connectivity in an Internet of Things is really what their user experience is about.
When it comes to wearable tech, everyone's inner Karl Lagerfeld comes to the fore. Analysts acknowledge that one of the biggest problems with wearable tech is that it isn't very wearable. Clearly, wearable tech leaves much to be desired from a fashion perspective, though there are exceptions, such as Ringly (ringly.com) and Cuff (cuff.io) jewellery.
Tech-fashion nerdiness You don’t need to be Anna Wintour to see how Google Glass set the bar in wearable tech-fashion nerdiness. Fashion technology (fashtech) failure is the new wardrobe malfunction, and smartwatches are no exception.
To address fashion failings, Apple hired Angela Ahrendts of Burberry to get its wearable tech experience right, while Google Glass has Diane von Furstenberg on board .
But tech styling is still not right for many. The Apple Watch looks distinctly gaudy and masculine. The original Pebble is cute but plasticky, and the Steel version looks too macho. The Tikker watch, which counts down what remains of your life, is a nod to Samuel Beckett fatalism with an almost toy-like deceptiveness. Even the Motorola Moto 360, probably the best of the lot style-wise, is spoilt by its flat-tyre face – it's not completely round.
Mass appeal? Is this the dawn of a new age of wearable tech, asked Davin O'Dwyer in The Irish Times when the Apple Watch was launched. I would say that we have some way to go before the smart watch reaches the mass game-changing appeal of a smartphone or tablet device.
The lack of style, limited functionality, overlaps and gaps in features, and the lack of killer apps are all limitations to mass adoption. So too is the price (Google Glass will set you back $1,500, plus tax).
We can scoff at the performance and aesthetic limitations of wearable tech. But think back to how we perceived the shouty, sweaty guy at the next restaurant table yelling “Sell!” into a shoebox-sized “mobile” phone 25 years ago, and see how far we have come.
Tech design will mature to a realisation that, for users, wearable tech needs to be either stunning or invisible. Until then, wearable tech awaits a Kate Moss Glastonbury moment to take off in the mind of the public. Watch this space. Or catwalk.
Ultan Ó Broin is director of Oracle applications user experience for Oracle. The opinions expressed here are personal
