Wearables – Tech.pinions

Dear Smartwatch, thanks for the notification, now what?

Every now and then I try out a variety of smartwatches. The latest I am putting through its paces is one based on Google’s own Android Wear platform. I keep hoping I’ll crack the nut and discover something new that may explain why this particular product might be successful. I’m still skeptical, but perhaps I found some light at the end of the tunnel.

The value proposition of smartwatches, to date, is notifications. What stands out to me, each and every time I use a smartwatch, is that nearly all notifications pushed to my wrist are just duplicates of what is on my smartphone. Nothing different. Same thing, on both devices. A phone call comes in and my pocket and my wrist start making noise. A text message comes in and my phone and my wrist start making noise. An email, a twitter message, a message saying my photos have been backed up to Google cloud, a message from one of the six messaging apps I use regular to talk to people all over the globe, each renders a nice buzz and ring on both my smartphone and my smartwatch.

Where this really is amazing (/sarcasm) is when I’m on my PC, have my phone on my desk and my watch on my wrist. I get chimes, buzzed, and notified in several different ways all at the same time. With regard to the watch, these notifications are utterly useless in most situations. Given I am OCD about Twitter, email, and texts, I thought I would genuinely like getting notified of a text, email, Twitter message, or phone call on my wrist. The problem I’ve found is the notifications I’m interested in always knowing about are only somewhat appealing when I’m not staring at some other digital screen in my life, which also gets these notifications — like my tablet, PC, or smartphone. So when are these situations? When I’m walking through the city from meeting to meeting and my phone is in my pocket. When I am driving. When I am in a lunch meeting with a friend or colleague. Basically, whenever my smartwatch is the only personal screen I have in sight. The problem with this is, in many of those contexts, the notification is nice to know but un-actionable. Thank’s for the notification but now what? This is how I feel more often than not when I get dozens of notifications on my wrist.

So where do we go? Is there a “there there” with smartwatches? Perhaps an experience I had today gives us insight.

I was on my way back from a meeting in Palo Alto to have dinner with some colleagues in Santa Clara. I had two hours to kill before appointments so I went to Starbucks to catch up on email and Twitter. I’m accustomed to looking at my smartwatch with every little buzz, even though I am rarely rewarded for doing so. However, at about 5pm, I got a notification that was rewarding, relevant, and extremely useful. I was deep into email and Twitter and lost track of the time. I got a notification from Google Now, which said leave at 5:11pm to arrive on time. Pictured below.

Thanks to Google Now, my smartphone knew what my next appointment was, where it was, looked up local traffic data, and notified me when I had to leave to be there on time. Given I had lost track of time, that was useful. I’ve noted Google Now is the beginning of an anticipation engine, and for the first time that anticipation engine yielded value which appeared on my wrist.

As I use these devices, what becomes apparent is most notifications pushed to the wrist today are useless. More importantly, they are notification overload. One of my concerns is this causes a “my watch cried wolf” kind of syndrome. When so many notifications come to my wrist, and 90% are not useful, I learn to ignore them and then subsequently miss the few that are actually useful.

All of this to say, and to agree with Tim’s column today, we still have a long way to go for this to be a viable mass market solution. Notifications must get smarter. Google Now telling me when to leave with a notification I don’t see on my PC, and one that can be lost in other notifications on my Android phone, was useful. It was contextual and relevant. These are the kinds of things that make sense. The problem is, I find them few and far between. Maybe Apple cracks the nut, but maybe we just aren’t ready yet. We will know soon enough.

Divining Apple’s Wearable Design

Most of the wearables on the market today are an experiment in artificial stupidity. Rather than solve problems, they create them. Using a wearable today is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

A good design introduces enough unfamiliarity to be interesting, but not so much as to be annoying. ~ John Maeda (@johnmaeda)

Don’t get me wrong. Today’s wearables should not be tossed aside lightly. They should instead be thrown with great force. ((With apologies to the great Dorothy Parker)) In fact, that reminds me of a riddle:

QUESTION: If you throw the Samsung Galaxy Gear off the Eiffel Tower and you throw the Moto 360 off the tower of Pisa, which one would hit the ground first?

ANSWER: Who cares?

CAPTION: Today’s Wearable Marketplace

How do I know Android wearables are a terrible idea? China doesn’t even steal them and make knockoffs. ~ The grugq (@thegrugq) 7/10/14

What’s Missing?

Most companies are full of processes designed to solve problems from a long time ago. ~ John Maeda (@johnmaeda)

Today’s smartwatches are going nowhere because they’re using tomorrow’s technology to provide yesterday’s solutions to problems that no one has today. But what about tomorrows’ wearables? Apple is rumored to be bringing out a line of their own wearables this Fall and Apple is well-known for their design prowess.

Will Apple use design to differentiate their product?

“I think a lot of people see design primarily as a means to differentiate their product competitively,” Ive said. “I really detest that.”

Hmm. Maybe not.

Perhaps Apple’s wearables will be better because they will have better technology.

We don’t buy things because they have better technology; we buy them because they’re better designed. ~ johnmaeda (@johnmaeda)

Hmm. Maybe not that either.

Or perhaps Apple’s wearables will be better by design.

Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department. ~ Tom Peters

I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much. It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod. ~ Steve Jobs

Ah, design. That’s what’s missing in today’s wearables and that’s where Apple shines.

We’re the only company that owns the whole widget — the hardware, the software, and the operating system. We can take full responsibility for the user experience. We can do things that the other guy can’t do. ~ Steve Jobs

Dieter Rams’s Design Principles

Steve Jobs and Jony Ive were admirers of Dieter Rams, a famous designer for Braun, who had a number of mottos and aphorisms about design. Let’s look at seven of his design principles and see how they apply to current and potential wearable devices.

1) GOOD DESIGN MAKES A PRODUCT USEFUL

A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it. ~ Dieter Rams

Today’s wearables are not very useful. In fact, they’re more work than they’re worth. Surveys show most of today’s wearables end up in a drawer after about three months of use.

If notifications are to be useful on your wrist then they can’t just be a mirror of the ones on your phone. ~ Ben Bajarin (@BenBajarin)

At best, today’s wearables duplicate the functionality of a smartphone on a form factor not well suited for performing smartphone functions. Now what does that remind me of? Oh yeah, trying to cram a desktop operating system into a tablet form factor. How’d that work out?

CAPTION: The first public prototype of a Tablet PC (2001). It ran the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition ((You’ve gotta love Microsoft’s naming conventions.)) operating system ((Bill Gates of Microsoft showed the first public prototype of a Tablet PC (defined by Microsoft as a pen-computer allows hardware in accordance with the specifications made by Microsoft and running a licensed copy of the operating system “Windows XP Tablet PC Edition”) at COMDEX.))

Good design isn’t about being pretty, it’s about solving a tangible problem. Today’s wearables are answers searching for a question. If wearables are to have any tomorrows, it will be because they provide a startlingly good answer to the unidentified, undefined, unmet needs of today.

If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking about what is on the market today. In 2007, what we wanted was an iPod and a phone. What we got was an iPod and a phone and an internet communicator and (a year later) an app store. What we got was a computer in our pocket. The iPhone didn’t give us what we wanted, it gave us what we needed. The same will be true of wearables.

2) GOOD DESIGN MAKES A PRODUCT UNDERSTANDABLE

It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory. ~ Dieter Rams

Below is the remote control that came with the Sony Google TV.

— Not understandable.
— Not self-explanatory.
— Not good design.

A well designed product doesn’t merely do your work, it also works the way you do.

There was a debate [on the Lisa] team about the mouse. Was it going to have a mouse, and how many buttons should it have? Steve and I wanted one button, because if there’s one button, you never have to think about it. One of the former Xerox guys argued for six buttons. He said, “Look, bartenders have six buttons on those drink dispensers, and they can handle it.” But that was a failure to understand what Steve was trying to do with user experience. ~ Trip Hawkins, excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”

If you’re designing a product and your customer has to think about how to use it, then you’re not done designing.

Design makes what is complex feel simpler, and makes what is simpler feel richer. ~ johnmaeda (@johnmaeda)

If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking smartphone interface on a watch form factor. Think monitor on a computer (Apple II), a mouse on your desk and GUI interface on your screen (Macintosh), a shuttle wheel in your hand (iPod), and a touch interface on glass (iPhone and iPad). If wearables deserve to be a separate category, then they deserve a form of input uniquely suited to their size and form factor.

3) GOOD DESIGN IS UNOBTRUSIVE

Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression. ~ Dieter Rams

Good design gets design out of the way. If it’s done right, it seems inevitable. The best designs feel almost as if they were undesigned because they’re just the way you would expect them to be.

The word that comes up over and over again when describing good design is “disappears”. Here are some quotes, to illustrate:

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life. ~ Bill Gates

I like things that do the job and kind of disappear into my life. ~ Steve Jobs

If it disappears, we know we’ve done it. ~ Craig Federighi

Technology is at its best and its most empowering when it simply disappears ~ Jony Ive

Herein lies another clue for us all. If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking in terms of what the device can do and start thinking in terms of what the device will allow us to do. A well designed wearable will not make us do more. Instead, it will allow us to accomplish more while we do less. It will not impose its way of doing things upon us. Rather, it will allow us to impose our way of doing, upon those things, that we need done.

4) GOOD DESIGN IS HONEST

It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept. ~ Dieter Rams

Here is Steve Jobs, describing the iMac in 2002:

(Why not) let each element be true to itself? If the screen is flat, let it be flat. If the computer wants to be horizontal, let it be horizontal.

Now compare that sentiment to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, in one-handed operation mode. Ironically, in the image below, the one-handed mode is being demoed with the use of two hands.

— Not honest.
— Not true to itself.
— Not good design.

Abraham Maslow said: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.” The same is true of devices. Good design doesn’t make a device better than it is. It doesn’t even make a device better. Good design fulfills a device’s destiny. It makes it what is and what it was always meant to be.

If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to think about allowing a wearable to be true to itself. A wearable will be small. A wearable may be in contact with our body. A wearable will be persistent. A wearable will be proximate. Does a monitor — which is large and battery draining — work within the constraints of small and persistent? I doubt it.

We need to stop thinking “watch” and start thinking sensors (which are small and in contact with our body) ID (which is persistent) information, payments and security (which is proximate). In fact, we need to stop thinking about what a wearable can DO and start thinking about the WHERE of wearables. Wearables may not need to DO anything at all. They may just need to be in the same place and space that we are. That may be their true calling. And that may be more than enough to make them invaluable.

5) GOOD DESIGN IS LONG-LASTING

It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society. ~ Dieter Rams

There has been much talk in the tech press of Apple becoming more of a fashion shop.

Might Apple have a future as a fashion conglomerate? – CNET

Apple Has Gone Full-Fashion With Its Newest Executive Hire – Refinery29

Apple Looks to Fashion as it Preps for iWatch – Esquire

I think this talk is misguided.

The following epitomizes fashion:

Fashion is something that goes in one year and out the other. ~ Denise Klahn

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. ~ Oscar Wilde

Fashion is made to become unfashionable. ~ Coco Chanel

Apple is a Design Shop. Design is about style. Design is about aesthetics. Design is about long lasting.

Fashions change, but style is forever. ~ Anonymous

Fashion changes, style remains. ~ Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel

Good design doesn’t date. ~ Harry Seidler

Design IS beautiful, not because it tries to be, but because it MUST be:

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty … but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

CAPTION: If it looks well, it flies well — aesthetics and performance relate.

I think this may provide us with the biggest clue as to what Apple is NOT going to do in wearables. If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking “watch” and we need to stop thinking “fashion.” Apple will not create a device that is decorative and a slave to fashion. Fashion changes far too quickly. Apple will seek, instead, to make something that is long lasting and enduring. That most probably means an Apple wearable will be restrained, unobtrusive, barely noticeable, virtually invisible.

6) GOOD DESIGN IS AS LITTLE DESIGN AS POSSIBLE

Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity. ~ Dieter Rams

Robert Browning said, “less is more” ((Popularized by the German-born American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)) and there is a lot of truth contained in that pithy paradoxical platitude. However, when it comes to design, I much prefer Dieter Rams’ “less, but better”. It encapsulates — in three words — the concept of good design being as little design as possible.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing… layout, processes, and procedures. ~ Tom Peters

What is left out … is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in. ~ Katherine Paterson

See it big, and keep it simple. ~ Wilferd A. Peterson

‘Think simple’ as my old master used to say – meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms…. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

[pullquote] Good design subtracts features yet increases functionality[/pullquote]

Features add complexity. Complexity adds functionality. Good design is paradoxical. It subtracts features while simultaneously increasing functionality. A good design finds an elegant way to put all the features you need in. A great design leaves half those features out. ((Inspired by Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW)))

A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away. ~ Joseph Joubert

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away… ~ Antoine De Saint-exupery

The philosophy (at Apple) was never stated, but it was this: Get rid of all the junk you didn’t need. ~ Tom Suiter, director of Apple creative services ((Excerpt From: Max Chafkin. “Design Crazy.”))

If we want to forecast what Apple is going to introduce in wearables, we need to stop thinking “features”, need to start thinking essentials and need to focus on minimalism — doing the most with the least. That’s why I think an Apple wearable will be more like a band than a watch. But no matter what form the Apple wearable takes, look for it to be less than you expect, yet do more than you might initially anticipate.

Conclusion

There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for. – Milton Glaser

There are no “wow” wearable devices on the market today. In fact, I’d venture to say our initial reaction to today’s wearables has been closer to “Yikes!”

The future lies in designing and selling computers that people don’t realize are computers at all. ~ Adam Osborne

Let me repeat that, because I love it so much. The future lies in designing and selling computers that people don’t realize are computers at all.

That about says it all, so I’ll say little more. We won’t have to guess when wearabables get it right. We’ll simply know, because we’ll stop thinking about how much better wearables have become and start thinking, instead, about how much better our lives have become.

Post Script

Thoughts on my thoughts? Leave a comment, below, or contact me on Twitter @johnkirk.

Our Wearable Future: Lessons Unlearned

This article is exclusively for subscribers to the Think.Tank.

Please Silicon Valley. Do Not Turn The Car Into Another Boring Box.

We stand at the intersection of the Internet of Things and the Connected Car. Soon, Cortana shall summon to us a driverless, fully autonomous vehicle, shared by the community, owned by no one, that will safely transport us to our chosen locale, as we tweet, stream, and tap away from the comfort of the back seat. Mostly, this is good. For most even, it will likely be very good. But I fear one of humanity’s greatest inventions, the car, will be reduced to yet another boring box, stuffed with computer chips, powered by lines of codes, and possessing no soul.

Please Silicon Valley, do not kill my love for the car.

One Piece At A Time

A revolution is taking place within the automotive industry. It began not in Detroit, Germany or Tokyo, but as with all revolutions, from the outside. In this case, Silicon Valley. The spread of computing, connectivity and the cloud has at last reached our cars. Driving — and automobiles — will never be the same.

Per the glorious visions of venture capitalists, the new market dreams of old world automakers and the ceaseless, prosaic functions of the Internet of Things, this is our car’s very-near future: Sensors under the hood, inside the dash, within the tires, sensors embedded in the roads and placed above traffic lights, all pumping out streams of data in real time, sent via telemetry to nearby vehicles, transmitted to the web for processing and analysis, shared with the crowd, then acted upon by the many computer chips within our own increasingly self-aware vehicle, all part of a highly monetizable big data ecosystem.

I am not at all opposed to this. Such efforts will almost certainly lead to faster commutes, a greener planet, fewer accidents and many saved lives. The Silicon Valley vision for the car of tomorrow should be lauded.

I ask only that the very best aspects of the car be carried forward into the future and not de-constructed into little more than a cubicle on wheels.

As a native Detroiter, I know cars are more than just data generators. Cars are freedom, independence, liberty, aspiration, mobility. In so many ways, cars disconnect us from the world as they reconnect us with our primal emotions. Cars are beautiful, personal, powerful. I want this not to go away.

I am not at all convinced we can trust Silicon Valley to transform these glorious mechanical objects into anything other than another node in a data-fueled, globe spanning web.

Let Me Ride

While driverless cars, as Google has promoted, are likely a decade away from practical use, semi-autonomous vehicles should be available in the developed world well before the end of this decade. The Internet of Things will enable these semi-autonomous, ‘situationally aware’ vehicles to keep us properly centered in the lane, to apply the brakes if we, the ‘driver,’ fail to spot the pedestrian in the crosswalk. They can ease off the throttle should they sense another vehicle is too close.

The car of 2020, and probably much sooner, will inform us when we are driving too fast given the current road conditions — and take corrective action should we fail to heed its informed advice.

These semi-autonomous vehicles will communicate with other cars, busses, navigation services and transit authorities as much as they communicate with us. This is good. As a proponent of mobile technologies, the cloud, wearables, sensors, Bluetooth, et al, I fully appreciate the value that comes from the open sharing of our data. If I am stuck in traffic, by all means let my car inform others of a better route. If a driver’s car wishes to inform those of us a few minutes behind that there’s a hidden police stop, good for us.

Above all however, the connected car will make for safer roads. Over 95% of all car accidents are caused by driver error. The Internet of Things will put a stop to this.

According to Intel, which is keen to put still more computing chips into our cars, with a mere one second warning, over 90% of all car accidents could be prevented. A half-second warning will prevent over 50% of all car accidents. Sensors and computer chips can act faster than us. They can also behave far more rationally. If we are being dumb, careless, foolish or simply unaware behind the wheel, our connected car can save us from ourselves — and save many others as well.

Over one million people die each year from car accidents. The benefits of integrating connectivity and computing inside our cars and within our road systems is significant.

And yet…

I still want the car to remain mostly mechanical, always beautiful, powerful, visceral — all those things that are never considered relevant in Silicon Valley.

Where I come from, it was absolutely no coincidence the boy whose father let him borrow the Camaro Z28 happened to be dating the prom queen.

No parallel to this exists for the young man with the biggest PC tower or the newest smartphone.

When it comes to our cars, whether for 2015 or 2025, let us not place clock speed above top speed, throughput over horsepower, or user interface above road handling. Nodes have primal desires, too.

No Particular Place To Go

While few things in life are as joyous as a fast car, top down, the open road beckoning, music blaring, such moments are rare. No matter how beautiful or powerful the car, the daily commute can be a grind. The connected car helps mitigate this, delivering all the comforts of our modern, fully connected world, accessible via a tap on the screen, or a command from our voice.

Stuck in traffic? No worries. The smartphone-like cars of post-2015 will offer:

streaming music, your favorite podcasts, even videos (for the kiddies)
news, weather, market data — read aloud, even personalized, as your new car, like a giant rolling Siri, knows your interests
geofenced notifications
Twitter and Facebook updates, voice driven, naturally
the fastest routes to everywhere you want to go
the nearest gas stations and restaurants
driving analysis, perhaps even a driver ‘Klout’ score based on your speed, how hard you brake, how close you were driving to other vehicles
engine diagnostics

These are all good. Silicon Valley is actively seeking to disrupt our commute. I stand with them. As our cars become increasingly more connected, tapping more computing power, more crowd wisdom, more algorithmic analysis, our driving should improve, our commutes should become more enjoyable, and ultimately, personal productivity should increase. Quite possibly, stress levels will all go down.

Again, my selfish concern is that these measurable goods will increasingly lead to an emphasis on “cars” that maximize efficiency, comfort, UIs, and that offer the best search, the most up-to-date data, the sharpest display.

A box.

Help Me, Apple. You’re My Only Hope

Is it possible to have the best of tomorrow with the best of yesterday?

I believe in the beneficent power of technology and innovation. I fully appreciate that Big Tech, Big VC, and Big Government want a lead role in the multi-trillion-dollar Internet of Things revolution. All are eager to remake our existing infrastructure, to place “intelligence” inside our cars, to link driver, car, road, and metro transit system into a cohesive, smartly flowing whole. I accept their work will alter not only driving but possibly even remake our towns and cities.

Why, then, does this make me a bit uneasy?

I do not fear my next car will experience a blue screen of death. Well, not much. Nor am I terribly worried hackers will access my car’s data, which will no doubt be linked to a payment system that lets me speed through electronic tollbooths.

I fear Silicon Valley will fail to divine the value in what makes cars glorious, and reduce the ultimate driving machine to just one more computing device.

Should I be disheartened or joyful that Apple SVP Eddy Cue joined the Ferrari board in 2012? Or that Apple SVP Phil Schiller sees fit to have a Racer X avatar on his Twitter profile?

Will these Apple executives help keep our cars from becoming just the latest personal computer box? I can’t afford a Ferrari, although I can pretend I’m Racer X — or possibly his brother, Speed. The question is, how long can I maintain the dream?