When you want to make an good impression, wearable technology products are your allies. Not only that, but they make your life easier, as well. 

There is no better time to bring into our readers attention the products that confirm the highly technologized world we live in than today. If you were wondering what have been the experts developing lately, well, we have the answer. In today’s article, we will be discussing some of the most useful wearable technology products on the market.

“Why have the classic watches been replaces by the smart watches?” almost sounds like “Why have we replaces Nokia 1300 with iPhone X?” The world “suffers” an on-going evolution, and there’s no time for traditionalism. At least not in this field. The high-tech products are out for us to enjoy them, use them, and simplify our lives.

The list below includes products that you might need or someone you know might need. Designers are notorious for embracing all these innovations. That’s why wearable tech products make amazing gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, Christmas, so on and so forth.

If you love our list, like it, comment it, and share it for others too see it. Or you can just love it silently.

Smart running shoes

Shoes are part of the everyday clothing, but when they can read your mood and your heartbeat, they become something else. Lenovo’s running shoes do that and we are in awe. Not to mention that they work as a mobile game controller, as well.

Fove

Fove is the first virtual reality headset and it was created by a Tokyo-based startup founded by Yuka Kojima and Lochlainn Wilson. The product utilizes eye-tracking technoligies, allowing the user to interact with objects by looking at them.

Fitbit’s 2018 offensive

Fitbit had been proving to be an amazing product for a while now. People love it for several reasons which include the ability to track your activity, exercise, food, weight and sleep. This watch will motivate you to exercise daily, a key factor in staying healthy.

Disneyland’s MagicBand

Disneyland’s bracelet is magic, indeed. The device connects to all of the vacation choices you make with My Disneyland Experience. It gives you access to the whole park, you can connect it to your card, it tracks you in the park, and the waiter will find you at the restaurant.

Temp tech tattoos 

These tattoos put an end to misleading or gamed breathalyzers. The temp tech tattoos measure the alcohol in your blood in a non invasive way. The printed tattoo paper generates an electronic board which contains a thin layer of gel. The gel induces sweat and an electrochemical sensor measures the alcohol. A smartphone will let you know via Bluetooth if it’s safe to drive home.

The design of a man-made object is only complete when people use it.

What happened?

Charles Babbage designed the first computer between 1833 and 1871. Then came 1984. The Apple Macintosh computer was invented: the birth of a mass-market PC with a graphical user interface and mouse. A completely new operating system was created to navigate information within this graphical interface.

Since then, screens have continued to shrink. We’ve moved from desktop, to laptop, to smartphone, to iWatch, to GoogleGlass, to — well —anything: the internet of things. The amount of smartphone users reaches 1.75 Billion by 2014.

We’re addicted to our screens.

But while creating and consuming information in 2D, we forgot about space.We forgot that information exists across systems, not just within them. And because we are so addicted to what happens inside screens, we forgot how to be human.

The evolving device

We’re discovering that information exist across systems and not just within them. New interfaces are increasingly designed with human habits in mind. Visually, we’re looking to natural surfaces and elements, which further communicate and respond to our human nature.

Material Design by Google Developers is trying to give people access to meaningful content using human behavior and “develop a single underlying system that allows for a unified experience across platforms and device sizes.” It sounds like a step in the right direction and is fun, neat, and colorful.

When we can design across systems, devices will evolve or disappear. We will not stop consuming content, rather consume it in a way that suits human behaviour, not the other way around.

Delivering content that sounds human

Future interfaces deliver content in more meaningful, relevant ways.Content can stimulate all of our senses and be delivered at contextually relevant times.

Fluid Interfaces is part of MIT Media Lab and is designing interfaces, which allow content to flow across systems. FingerReader is a wearable device that assists in reading printed text by receiving audio feedback of the words and haptic feedback of the text layout. Blind people can now read with their finger, an example of the human body as an interface, assisted by technology.

Audio is expanding not only the internet, but also our relationship with the content itself. Audio is an exciting medium to deliver content because unlike visual information, it doesn’t take up space.

As depicted in Her, we can experience an emotional connection with audio content, because sounds human; and characters and personalities mean that the content is — in a sense human. The Early Edition by Capsule.fm gives content personality using artificial hosts, Miranda and Carl, who read news headlines, weather, entertainment and jokes in between your music. The most sharable and engaging content is actually not necessarily informative content such as news, rather the engaging and personalised audio confessions, artificial jokes and flattery.

Guy Hoffman proves the power of connecting audio with body language. His projects in human-robot interaction combine audio output with posture, which connect with humans on a natural level. In his TED Talk “Robots with Soul”, Hoffman explains how his inspiration from animation and acting resulted in the implementation of body language in robots, which were programmed to improvise music performances.

Still from “Her” by Spike Jonze

Systems are connected

Minority Report offered a vision of the collaborative workspace. John Underkoffler of Oblong Industries worked together with Spielberg on Minority Report and has since delivered a similar technology for the real-world collaborative workspace: Mezzanine. Take a look at the demo Underkoffler presented to Robert Scoble, which shows a truly collaborative workflow.

Elon Musk shows futuristic interfaces and workflows at SpaceX, where the complete design experience has been reimagined, allowing engineers to design more directly in 3D. Implementing a number of technologies, including Leap Motion, Siemens and Oculus VR, as well as NVIDIA and Projection Design. Musk demos the Hand Gesture Holographic Interface to show how SpaceX is improving the engineering and design processes through interaction.

Still from “Minority Report”

The world is our interface

As we increasingly discover that we are no longer constrained to a screen or device, there are new possibilities for interaction with content and our environment. The car offers a unique case for interface design. Here, we should again seek inspiration from human senses, using them compliment the driving experience — or rather — free us to concentrate on driving. Using voice recognition technology and eye tracking technology, as well as new touch interfaces such as Matthaeus Krenn’s proposal for an in-car UI, we can build an intuitive environment, which works together with our own behavior.

Touch is increasingly exciting in interaction design and the future interface, where haptic technology provides a more sensitive and responsive experience with our environments. In his Keynote at Solid 2014, Ivan Poupyrev demonstrates his work with Disney, using haptics to build inspiring, interactive playgrounds with “Beyond Gadgets: Interactive Everything”.

Still from Ivan Poupyrev: “Beyond Gadgets: Interactive Everything” – Solid 2014 Keynote

Contextual content

Not only should the interface be part of our existing environment, the content should react or be generated by our environment. Welcome to contextual content.

Delivering content which is relevant to your context is what we’re building at Capsule.fm and means that information that you hear is relevant to your context: everything from your location, mood, behavior and intentions. Not only do you get the content that you want at a time that suits you, using natural language processing, the content in delivered in an interactive flow.

So say you’ve just heard a news story relevant to your location and in the morning, when you’re on the way to work. We will then bridge that to your music, streamed from iTunes, Soundcloud or WiMP, because you’re on the move. In cases where you are more likely to be relaxing or news is of a different mood, the amount of music and other content is adjusted to suit your context. This is how a morning might sound.

Alive and growing

Systems are living and grow with our input. Our feedback makes them grow and become more intelligent.

As they expand, we can seek inspiration from the natural work in the form of natural surfaces and materials. The iPhone6 Sapphire shows the potential of new materials with light, durable and portable possibilities.

Nature already has design figured out. Constructal law is a universal phenomenon derived from physics to account for design generation and evolution in nature. Adrian Bejan states “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.” The distribution of imperfection over time generates geometry. If the flows stops, the system is dead.

User experience in this time of information flow are considered in the documentary “Connecting”, where Robert Murdock describes the process of guiding the user to desired outcomes and the interface as a stage in which props (or features) are used to gently direct the user.

Let’s think of content and information as a fluid, living system, which is moving with us during our everyday lives. Let’s deliver and provide access to that stream, in an intelligent, relevant way, which is in tune with human behavior. Let’s rethink interfaces as our world, rather than devices or trapped within an exiting element.

If you are a designer or developer committed to making technology more usable to via human interaction patterns, Toptal would like to hear from you.

Here is a great example of technology expanding into different creative mediums like fashion. ShiftWear Shoes is a creative startup placing custom animations on sneakers. The shoes display animated gifs in full color by using e-Paper technology, similar to that used by Amazon’s Kindle. This electronic paper is lightweight, flexible and resistant. There is a battery embedded in the sole of the shoes that charges while you walk. The soles of the shoes are covered in Kevlar for protection and durability.

The animation on the sneakers can be controlled by a smartphone app and only uses power when switching animation designs giving it a long lasting battery life. The startup is on Indiegogo and has raised over 81K with 352 backers so far. The sneakers are still in the prototype page, but this is a unique development in wearable design.

Remember how wearing a calculator watch back in the day made you feel like George Jetson or his boy Elroy? Technology has come a long way from spelling out naughty words (upside down) on your calculator. These days, you can make calls, record videos, check your health, and buy coffee from your smartwatch–and that’s just the beginning. With the advent of Google Glass, Android Wear, and the distant promise of Apple iWatch, the world is slowly getting comfortable with the idea of wearing technology, instead of holding it. This idea of wearing a computer will undoubtedly shift the way users interact with the internet and its design. Is your web design future proof?

What Exactly is Wearable Technology?

Wearable technology can be clothing or accessory items. Most wearable technology comes in the form of wrist wear or eyeglasses. It’s normally light-weight and unassuming. The most popular and accessible uses for wearable tech exist in the realm of fitness gadgets, such as Fitbit, and smartwatches, like Pebble. Google Glass has gotten a lot of attention but, at $1500 a pop, it’s cost prohibitive from most folks. That said, so was the iPod when it was first introduced. Eventually, a competitive marketplace will drive the price to a reasonable cost, and you’ll need to be ready when it happens.

Motorola’s Moto 360 uses Google’s Android Wear to create an interactive experience with your watch. Moto360.motorola.com

Why Should You, Web Designer, Care?

A lot of naysayers are quick to write off wearable technology as a fad, but a recent report from Pew Research Center Internet Project indicates that 83% of industry experts believe that wearable technology will see huge growth within the next 10 years. By 2025, we’ll be fully immersed in the Internet of Things (IoT). This means that users will be accessing websites from various platforms, not just desktops and mobile devices.

As technology expands and more users embrace wearables, more of your clients will want to their sites to be accessible. If you’re unprepared for such requests, clients will search elsewhere to fit their needs.

Although wearable technology is in its infancy now, it’s rapidly growing. Expect it to develop like a kid in puberty– overnight. All of the primitive functions of wearable tech are already in place– browsing, social media, instant messaging, camera, and video. As a web designer, your job will be getting rid of the pimples and awkwardness that comes along with pubescent technology. Like now, your future in wearable tech will consist of creating a beautiful and functional space that allows users to effectively access the information they care about.

Full-blown web design for wearable tech may be a ways off, but it’s not too early to start thinking about how this type of technology will inform your design decisions.

How Will Wearable Tech Impact Your Design?

There’s no doubt that wearable tech will impact your web design, the question is how. We can look at how the introduction of mobile technology, such as smart phones and tablets, challenged the web design community to create responsive language. In much that same way, the advent of wearable tech will cause designers to streamline and ruthlessly edit the superfluous.

Here’s 7 considerations for wearable tech web design:

1. Designs are responsive.

This cannot be emphasized enough. When I browse over mobile devices, I encounter a huge number of websites that aren’t optimized for mobile viewing. In 2014. According to a recent study performed by Restive Labs, only 3% of Fortune 1000 websites are responsive and fast. If they can’t get it right, you can imagine how most fair.

Currently, browser-capable wearable technology uses mobile viewports. Don’t wait to implement this meta tag into your web design.

2. Information is instant.

Wear techies (a term I made up, affectionately) want information immediately. Instant access is the whole point of wearing technology as opposed to putting it in your pocket. This means that your web design shouldn’t get in the way and slow the user’s access to information.

Why is the visitor on your website? Figure it out and plan your design around the answer. Once you get away from designing for design’s sake, and understand what’s most important to the visitor, you’ll be able to strip away elements or flaws in your design that slow down your site, or clutter the user’s path to information.

3. Interactivity is everything.

Wearable tech is a soft introduction into augmented reality. Take a look at the Innovega iOptik platform that will provide users with a “virtual canvas” through the combination of contact lenses and micro-projector eyeglasses.

Use a combination of contact lens and enhanced eyeglasses to augment reality. Innovega-inc.com

Voice navigation is another interactive element in wearable tech. If you don’t want to talk, you can just move your head, hand, or possibly only your finger to navigate.

Wearable tech allows users to get inside of technology in a way that’s never been done before.
What does that mean for web design?
For one thing, it means your web design can’t be static and resting on pretty. It should be dynamic with a clear understanding of who your visitors are and how best to meet their needs.

4. Design is minimalist.

Minimalism has been on trend for the last few years in web design, but expect it to go even further. Minimalist design is more appealing for the wearable platform because it doesn’t overwhelm. Too often, web designers over-stylize in an attempt to impress. The harder work is in creating a quiet design that lets the content take center state. Your ability to edit is in direct proportion to your maturity as a designer.

Think about how you’d like your website to be perceived on a wearable device. Screen space is limited.

5. Text is larger.

When will the small text finally die? I’m a big believer in 12 pt or higher, but no where is this more important than with wearable technology.

Let’s take a look at Google Glass. Although limited in scope and navigation, users can still access web pages. If your website hasn’t been optimized for mobile browsing (see #1), visitors may not be able to read the text on the screen. In Google Glass, the display is akin to looking a 25” TV from 8 feet away. Imagine trying to read tiny text on that TV. No bueno.

6. Pop-ups are ostracized.

I’m not a big fan of pop-ups, no matter how sleek. It may be controversial, but pop-ups have absolutely no place in wearable technology, at least not yet. Try closing the “x” of a pop-up window in the aforementioned Google Glass.

If you must include a pop-up window, be gracious enough to include a huge “close” button.

7. Web design is intuitive.

Answer this question: Why is someone accessing your site from wearable technology? Is it to stay informed, to be entertained, to get directions, to find a coupon? Whatever the need, your web design must understand and guide your visitor to their natural conclusion.

Intuitive design is more important than ever when it comes to wearable tech. Users won’t have the flexibility (or patience) to browse your website. Instead, your website must intuitively anticipate the user experience.

Meta SpaceGlasses give you Ironman precision with a 3D Stereoscopic Display. SpaceGlasses.com

In Conclusion

Wearable technology is just beginning to take off. Be prepared with future-proof web designs that respond to this exciting new medium.

What’s your favorite wearable technology?