Don’t Call Them Wearables

Technology is easy to recognize. One glance at a coffee shop laptop and you know it’s a Macbook Air – doesn’t matter if it has 12 stickers on it. This is generally applauded as good product design. If you can recognize a laptop in the wild with a sideways glance, the product can practically market itself. Considering that most wearable technology is made by technology companies, it too is built to be instantly recognizable. Fitbit Flex, Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband, Google Glass. You know it when you see it. The prevailing logic is that this is a good thing – see it, recognize it, want it.

Turquoise loses its allure after a few days.

While this works in technology, fashion (historically, wearables) is obviously more mercurial. Not only do trends constantly revolve, individual style shifts daily if not hourly. Uncredited work clothes give way to an arsenal of Swooshes and other reflective icons for your afternoon run. Nevertheless, it’s at the crossroads of fashion and technology where wearables are trying to make a home.

Even though wearables are supposed to be worn every day, their design and branding is typically more concerned with grabbing attention and market share than blending in. Fashion calls this a “statement piece.” The problem with statement pieces is that they’re meant to be worn occasionally, not every day. Everyday watches, wallets, sunglasses and other accessories are revered for their ability to go with anything, fit in anywhere. They aren’t supposed to be recognized across the street. It’s their details, seen up close, that are supposed to draw you in. A watch’s elegance is almost imperceptible from ten feet away. This is why I’m surprised it took so long for someone to do what Withings did with Activité. It’s a Swiss-made watch and activity tracker that looks like a reasonably elegant watch, not a nerd homing beacon. This is an admirable effort at stemming the tide of wearable fatigue.

People don’t get tired of wearables because they stop caring about their personal data. They get tired of them because they don’t want to wear futuristic digital elastomers everyday. Research from Endeavor Partners says that one-third of wearables stop being worn after six months. Contrast this anecdotally with me wearing the wearable device I call my watch almost every day since I bought it 5 years ago. Fitbit Force doesn’t compliment a nice dress. Fuelband feels dissonant with a suit. People get the shit kicked out of them for wearing Glass (1, 2). My watch has none of these side-effects.

Glass victim #1

Wearable technology is meant to be hidden. It’s the software that should be our primary interaction with these technologies and brands. Software is there when you want it and invisible when you don’t. The wearable part should be just that, wearable. It should be held to the same standard as any Everyday Carry piece. Either that, or it should subtly integrate into the watches and glasses and phones we already have. Modillian, for example, is making an intelligent watch strap built to fit the watch you already own. Google is partnering with Ray-Ban and Oakley to try and get people to stop calling Glass-wearers “Glassholes.”

Maybe calling all this stuff wearable technology is the problem. If people thought of these products as watches with exciting new features, or as dignified glasses with hidden capabilities, they would have a James Bond allure to expand beyond tech-for-tech-people and capture the broader market. Instead of fighting for acceptance with radical new devices, try to blend in… act like you’ve been there all along.