Epicenter:
The real wearable tech game-changers will be the ones you don’t notice at all
The future of wearable tech.
When it comes to the future of wearable technology, look no further. There will be very, very little of it to see. Despite the feverish attention paid to the recent Apple Watch this spring and other devices that loudly announce their presence, experts say the true game-changers will be the things we’d already choose to wear, embedded with technology capable of being as aesthetically unobtrusive as it is functionally powerful.
In other words, they will be invisible.
“This technology’s meant to be almost a part of us,” says Redg Snodgrass, the founder of the Wearable World meeting taking place this week in San Francisco. More than half of consumers say they’re aware of wearable technology devices, and global wearable technology market revenues and unit shipments are expected to grow 25 percent and 35 percent, respectively, by 2020, according to NPD Group findings.
Future wearables will go beyond the wrist and eyewear designed for, as Snodgrass puts it, “rich awkward people,” and into the very fabric we put on our bodies. “We’ll see a lot of interesting stuff neatly woven into clothing,” he predicts.
This is good news for fashion, and not just because it offers a welcome alternative to the assault of gadgetry we’ve seen thus far. While technology has already begun tapping fashion minds to collaborate in the design and marketing of smart watches, fitness trackers and high-tech jewelry — Tory Burch’s FitBit, Opening Ceremony’s MICA X Intel bracelet and Swarovski’s Misfit Shine baubles, among them — the future will require designers’ participation for looks, yes, but also for technical reasons.
“They’re the ones who know how to work with textiles. They’re the ones who know how to design for the body,” says Amanda Parkes, a fashion technologist whose recent projects include working with product development hub Manufacture NY, Ringly smart jewelry and Thesis Couture, headed by former SpaceX and Oculus talent recruiter Dolly Singh and set to launch scientifically re-engineered stilettos by fall.
Those at the forefront of the fashion and technology field agree that what’s ahead in wearable tech will require seismic shifts for traditionalists in both industries. Rather than bringing a fashion team in to slap a trendy exterior onto an existing product, the teams of the future will be multidisciplinary from the get-go, says London designer Amy Winters, whose experiments in high-tech fashion include garments that react to water, sun and sound.
“The scientist will start developing the technology, and the designer will go, ‘OK, this is the application for it,’ ” she says. “Or, ‘This is the interaction we can do with it,’ and it starts to be like a two-way conversation. That’s when we’re going to start getting our killer apps in this world of wearable tech.”
We’re not there yet. Right now, the most innovative wearable product is essentially a watch tethered, albeit wirelessly, to a mobile phone. Preceded by options from Pebble, Motorola, Samsung and others, the hotly anticipated Apple Watch debuted this spring with limited stock in highprofile retail stores such as Maxfield in Los Angeles and Colette in Paris, a retail roll-out that has more in common with a luxury fashion launch than that of your typical consumer technology product.
And while the competition and debate surrounding smart watches is particularly fierce, there’s a risingtide-lifts-all-ships argument to be made.
The Apple Watch, says Arnold, “makes the category of more interest to a wider range of consumers. It benefits Apple, yes, but it benefits anybody making those products.”
It’s easy to roll one’s eyes at the Apple Watch — and smart watches in general — for being less than earth shattering. Clunky, square faces dominate the offerings. You can still do more with your phone. The same can be said for smart glasses and fitness trackers. Their appeal is limited to certain populations: People who are interested in wearing a technology product to achieve a specific digital outcome, and a subset of that group: people who would rather achieve those specific digital outcomes handsfree.
Admittedly, getting certain things done with your phone nearby, but not in hand, is attractive, as is having a wrist-bound device that can communicate with other nearby tech devices. When it comes to shopping and style specifically, just think of how much easier in-store bar-code scanning, product searches and mobile payments stand to be with a smart watch.
Ultimately, though, says Parkes, the best way to look at the Apple Watch and other popular devices on the market is not so much in terms of the individual capabilities they offer at the moment, but as gateway platforms to ecosystems of apps that will eventually make possible as yet unheard of interactions among devices connected through the Internet of Things. For now, we can look at the smart wearables in front of us as a kind of bridge to future possibilities.
“It’s a transition strategy,” says Parkes, who imagines a time when designers “make real jewelry with embedded hardware,” rather than disguising hardware in jewelry-like exteriors.
A friend’s knockout necklace or neighbor’s stylish workout gear may very well be wearable technology. But you won’t see it that way. Instead, you’ll ask where to buy it.
Right now, the most innovative wearable product is essentially a watch tethered, albeit wirelessly, to a mobile phone.