When It Comes to Wearables, It’s Time to Design for Wearers’ Needs

Macala Wright - 13 january 2016

 

Without experience standards, we will not see adoption of wearables at scale

Wearables at CES this year finally took a turn in the right direction, resembling devices that people will actually purchase and, yes, wear. In its fifth year of development, the wearable tech landscape continues to evolve in its complexity. From design aesthetics to the technical specifications of products to accuracy of data, companies and product designers are starting to understand that they must master all of these aspects in order to successfully enter the wearables market and turn a profit as only three percent of the consumer population has started wearing tech.
What’s more, it was clear that my predictions in 2014 and 2015— that consumer behavior surrounding wearables would remain constant and that companies would need to further develop products that cater to wearers’ needs in order to further adoption (e.g. purchase)—have clearly started to come true. From what we saw on the show floor, consumers want products that feature intuitive design, practical use applications, don’t hinder task performance and enhance their ability to accomplish action.

Wearable Technology = Big Revenue

Juniper Research recently released “Smart Wearable Devices: Fitness, Healthcare, Entertainment & Enterprise: 2013-2018.” The study anticipates that the retail revenue from smart wearable devices, including smartwatches and glasses, will reach $19 billion by 2018. High price points, combined with anticipated strong demand, will drive the growth of the wearable industry. According to another Juniper Research study, the smart wearables market is expected to generate $53 billion hardware revenues by 2019.


This year, 41 exhibitors were eligible at the CES 2016 Wearable awards. From sexy and sophisticated, to the rugged and utilitarian— to just plain WTF?—the exhibitors on the floor had everything one could want to conduct consumer perspective market research to wear tech companies were in journey to gain entrance into the market. From the show floor and beyond, here are they key takeaways in wearable design:



Make It Beautiful and Sophisticated: From watches to fitness trackers to hybrid combinations, wearables are becoming more appealing as the best players enter their senior design phases. The Misfit Ray, Tag Heuer Connected, Ouraring, Gemio, Fossil and Withings Activite are six products that exemplify this trend.



While Withings, Gemio and Misfit started out from tech startup roots, these three companies serve as excellent examples of how technology and design can be combined into sophisticated, appealing products that consumers will buy because they don’t look like tech strapped to a body. With Tag Heuer, Withings and Fossil watches are excellent example of integrating fitness tracking capabilities into a product everyone wears daily and connects to a device they use daily: their smartphone. The products haven’t compromised style or the precision of the product clock in order to stick tech into it. Rather, they built them in tandem.



Make It Rugged and Functional: There are also those that have taken the design of wearables to a more practical and utilitarian point to appeal to a more practical consumer base in hopes of gaining a larger buyer base faster. The Moto 360, Garmin Forerunner 630 and Casio WSD-F10 are great examples of wearables designed for daily use and more “rugged & active” applications related the wearer’s lifestyle. These watches were designed with sports as the wearer’s use case. From cycling to mountain climbing to water sports. Many of these devices feature outdoor sports features like elevation, tide, atmospheric pressure and move and even layer an experiential “moment” feature for photos our outdoor opps when synced with the mobile app. The Moto 360 simple added “rugged utility” as a style statement for male wearer who want’s a more simplified, traditional design.



Clothes That Are Connected and Closely Worn: Traditional wrist activity trackers from FitBit and the recently debuted Under Armour UA Band were of mass interest on the floor, but an evolution in smart athleisure continues to grow. The ScotteVest, the Hexoskin Smart shirt to the OMSingal OMbra were best the products on the floor that represented the connection of functional technology to daily apparel. For all the items listed in this category, the goal is to add an intimate layer of connectivity through biometrics. Many of these garments fall into the “performance” category, leveraging sensors to help enhance and support athletics. What’s new is the depth of the product research conducted in this area; both Hexoskin and OmSingal put their products to the test, the latest CES 2016 version are the developments of extensive use scenarios. What’s more, their app technologies are available across all smart devices, lowering the barrier to purchase due to compatibility.



A Sound In Your Ear: Wearables are coming off the wrist and making their way into discrete places, such as in a wearer’s ear, so that you can either a) discreetly sync your connectivity or b) use devices to change the frequencies in your real world. Both TipTalk and Bragi Dash made tech tongues wag. The new Misfit Specter also received many accolades in terms of design and innovation; so did Doppler Labs with their Here and Dubs products.
Why the ear? Because it’s a place we’re used to placing our Bluetooth devices and headphones. It’s discreet and is the perfect place for a multi-use connected device. For example, Misfit Specter’s unique feature is a built-in accelerometer, which allows the earphones to be used to track activity and sleep when used, much like Misfit’s other products. So if the wearer doesn’t want to clip, wear or hand their device, they can simply put it in their ear. Misfit has exhausted every challenge to getting someone to wear the device with this latest release. Here takes music listening to a whole new level, making autotune—if that’s your thing—a fully connected experience.



You Are a Head Case: Believe it or not, augmented and virtual reality devices are wearables, too. From Oculus Rift to Microsoft’s HoloLens, from the second gen HTC Vive Pre to the Daqri Smart Helmet, we are taking it to the head so to speak. While no one will be walking around with them any time soon, unless you are one of those people that bought the Apple Watch and Google Glass for the cool factor, making virtual devices “wearable” has a long way to go as most people will not buy a product with current weights and bulk. PSFK will say that the Kopin Solos for cyclists, and the Daqri, may be on point for current use. BMW’s motorcycle concept helmet also gets points for ingenuity, with the ability to control the helmet on the left handlebar.

How to Design for Profitability
Credit Suisse analysts currently predict that within the next two or three years, the wearable technology market will balloon from the current $3-$5 billion range to $30 billion to $50 billion. In the next four years, an estimated 300 million wearable devices will be shipped. From beautifully designed to over the top, no matter what stages of development a wearable is in, in order to achieve profitability, designers and wearable tech companies need to be continually asking themselves questions that fall into five categories:
Functionality: Does the wearable meet our wants or needs?
Price: Is the product appropriately priced?
Style: How will its design impact wearable its wearer?
Privacy: How will users allow their personal information to be utilized?
Adoption: Do all of these area lead to someone buying and consistently using my product?
What The Future of Wearables Looks Like

Though wearable technology has been around for many years, it is only in entering its teens. Success in the wearables markets will be driven by companies that continually put consumers’ needs first. These companies should consider why consumers want technology connected to their bodies and how it could augment and ultimately amplify their lives. By adding information accuracy and device stability into the overall experience, companies can successfully create beautiful, intuitive products that consumers will want to buy. Once they’ve figured that out, they can address the ever growing question of device/product/wearer ubiquity.
During CES 2016, current, key and new players showed huge strides in developing the design aesthetics and technical product specifications needed to further fuel the demand for wearables. But it was clear to see that those involved with wearables will need to continue to make a significant investment into research and development, as well as look at future scalability. What’s more, compatibility and ubiquity have only begun to be addressed. Cross-platform capability as well as device synchronicity are going to be key—and that’s going to be a challenge when every maker wants to own their own market share.
Wearable technologists and the companies making product must understand that without ubiquity, we will not see adoption at scale. With so many wearables not being able to work with one another, winning in the specifications of wearables will likely be a two-blow knockout when it comes to design. It will be the right product that also has the right solution for battery power. These go hand-in-hand. In terms of wearables across the board at CES, the user experience needs to evolve. There are currently no standards for gestures, interactions and other movements. As all of these companies are building proprietary systems, it makes it difficult for people to cross over from one device to the other, and the speed of adoption will be slowed until those standards are set.