Table Of ContentMoving Wearables
into the Mainstream
Taming the Borg
Moving Wearables
into the Mainstream
Taming the Borg
by
Joseph L. Dvorak
Motorola
USA
Joseph Dvorak
[email protected]
ISBN-13: 978-0-387-69139-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-0-387-69142-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007934286
© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
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Printed on acid-free paper.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To my wife Barbara and children Katie and Justin
Acknowledgments
This book and its material was a true collaborative effort. First, the book
itself could never have been completed without the love and support of my
wife Barbara and my children Katie and Justin. Their patience and belief in
my ability to write the book were invaluable.
Much of the design principles and processes discussed in the book came
from two major wearables projects at Motorola. The first one, Person
Integrated Communications (PIC), was unfailingly supported by my
manager at the time Darrell McClendon. I am truly grateful for his firm
belief in the project and his efforts to keep the project going. I would also
like to thank Scott Greven who did much of the work on the
communications systems for the project. His excellent work and attention to
detail made short work of some of the most challenging parts of the
prototype systems.
The principle sponsor and supporter of the follow-on project,
Conformables, was my director in iDEN Technology at Motorola, Jaime
Borras. He continually urged us on in the face of many who doubted. We
would not have gotten as far as we did without his support and I thank him.
Much of the prototyping and design for Conformables was done by Luke
Lenzen, a three year intern who was the other major co-developer on the
project. His ideas and enthusiasm were major factors in our success. I would
also like to thank Alan Beatty and David Hayes who provided hardware and
systems level support for the prototypes.
viii Acknowledgments
Ryan Nilsen had a major impact on the formulation of the design
principles in this book and the design language adopted for many of the
prototypes. His designs were always very functional and very elegant and
were a major reason for the excitement these prototypes generated in all who
saw them.
Philip Hodgson, Thad Starner, and Sandy Pentland all provided valuable
sources and comments during their review of the book. I was also fortunate
to have Philip lending human factors advice during the PIC project. Randy
Vaas from Motorola provided valuable advice on legal aspects of wearables
in social contexts.
I am also deeply grateful to my wife who painstakingly proofread the
manuscript and caught numerous mistakes.
Finally, I would like to thank Susan Lagerstrom-Fife, Sharon Palleschi,
and the other professionals from Springer-US for their patience, advice, and
support during this project.
Preface
We are awash in technology. It is in our homes, our workplace, and our
cars. It is almost impossible to escape its influence on our lives. Our
technology demands our attention. Cell phones interrupt us regardless of
what we are doing or where we are. PCs frustrate us and make us feel
technologically inadequate.
And there is more on the way. Technologies such as biosensors,
augmented reality, and pervasive computing promise to literally immerse us
in a sea of technology, all meant to make our lives easier.
One of these promising technologies is wearables. Wearables have
received much attention in the past. The image usually shows someone
carrying a portable computer in their clothing or on their belt.
However, this is wearable only a geek could love. Graduate students and
researchers are comfortable with carrying and using large, obtrusive and
complex devices. Their focus is on pushing the envelope of current
technology. Ease of use and comfort are usually a lower priority.
Current wearable technology has also been adopted in specialized
application areas such as vehicle maintenance, inventory control, and the
military. These applications involve sophisticated tasks for which the
availability of computing power and special applications in mobile
environments outweigh the current levels of obtrusiveness and application
complexity.
x Preface
The term ‘wearables’ encompasses a wide spectrum of devices, services,
and systems Objects from entire desktop equivalent computers to a ring with
an RFID chip have been referred to as wearables. Not all of these types of
wearables will be accepted by the mainstream. Many wearable form factors
will have to change significantly if they are to be widely adopted by
consumers. The obtrusiveness of the devices, the complexity of the
applications, and the geeky appearance must be reduced. For the most part,
users of current wearables must conform to the constraints and limitations of
the technology and applications. While this may be acceptable in specialized
application areas, the general user population will not accept it. For these
users, the technology and applications must conform to them.
This book discusses the characteristics and design elements required for
wearable devices and systems to be widely adopted by the mainstream
population for use in their everyday lives. We introduce concepts such as
Operational Inertia that form a mindset conducive to designing wearables
suitable for adoption by the mainstream.
But there is more to designing a wearable than selecting the appropriate
technology and form factors. Technology is not used in a vacuum. This is
especially true for wearables. Since wearables are by their nature closely
associated with the person, their use generates many social and even legal
issues that have little to do with specific technologies. We discuss the
implications of these issues for mainstream wearable systems since it is
these issues that can pose the greatest impediment to their successful
adoption.
Wearable technology has actually been with us throughout history. An
early example is the development of buttons providing an easy method for
keeping shirts and jackets closed. More recent examples include the
development of synthetic materials such as nylon and rayon. However, it has
been so successfully integrated into people’s daily lives that those in the past
never regarded it as a specific technology. It was only when wearable
computers started to appear and their form factors were highly incompatible
with easy wearability and the concepts of fashion that wearables as a specific
technology gained real visibility.
With the new generation of PDAs and smartphones, the term wearable is
now in flux. There is no agreed upon definition of wearable. One of the most
comprehensive definitions is the set of characteristics and attributes of a
wearable computer defined by Steve Mann in 1998. This definition needs to
Preface xi
be refined for wearables aimed at the mainstream population. The
,
characteristics of not monopolizing the users attention and not restricting the
user’s activities need additional emphasis and development. The primary
vehicle for the refinement and increased emphasis in this book is
Operational Inertia. Operational Inertia is defined as the resistance a device,
service, or system imposes against its use due to its design. The
minimization of Operational Inertia is a constant design theme.
Most current applications of wearables are for wearable computers.
These are primarily focused on specialized activities such as vehicle
maintenance and military operations. An area with broader potential appeal
is wellness maintenance where the wearable monitors the user’s health and
activities and presents information and suggestions to maintain and improve
it. While significant design challenges remain, wellness maintenance could
be one of the most useful applications for the mainstream population. Other
areas of promising applications are cognitive assistance and personal
security.
Wearables will provide their most widespread benefits in the seamless
integration of people’s everyday tasks. By being aware of the user’s
environment and activities the wearable system will transparently and, in
many cases, proactively assist the user with whatever they are doing. We
will increase our effectiveness. But more importantly, we will increase our
ability to concentrate on those things that are really important to us.
To achieve these benefits wearables will incorporate a wide array of
technologies. Many of these technologies, such as graphical user interfaces,
are mature while others, such as speech recognition, are starting to find their
way into commercial products. Many others are still in the research or early
development stage. Examples include data fusion for context awareness,
indoor location systems, smart fabrics and clothing, and activity detection
and reasoning.
Combining these technologies into a system that is powerful but easy to
use and unobtrusive presents significant design challenges. Several factors
will determine how readily the mainstream population accepts wearables.
Among these, wearability, ease of use, and compelling form factors are most
relevant to design. Often these factors cannot all be optimized
simultaneously so tradeoffs must be made.
xii Preface
But the technical issues, as significant as they are, may not be the most
challenging. The use of wearables will generate many social issues as well.
Issues of privacy, violation of social conventions, dependency on
technology, and others will arise as people utilize wearables within their
daily tasks and social interactions. Society is starting to discuss some of
these issues now with the increasing use of camera phones for example. The
intimate association of the wearable with the person will give new urgency
and scope to these issues.
As is often the case with technology, laws and the legal system will play
catch up. Issues of personal responsibility for actions by intelligent and
mostly autonomous software agents, where the person ends and the wearable
begins relative to police searches, and the use of these devices in testing
situations or sensitive areas will be argued in and deliberated by the courts
for some time.
Regardless of the social issues and legal landscape that evolves,
wearables in some form will be used. Their full potential is hard to imagine.
New technologies such as flexible displays, brain – computer interfaces, and
totally implantable devices will completely alter wearables as we envision
them today. The incorporation of neural networks, emotion and
personalities, and commonsense reasoning will provide us with wearable
systems with unimagined power and intelligence. This will only further
strengthen the relationship between the user and their wearable system. It
may be no exaggeration to say that the relationship a user develops with
their wearable system will become highly symbiotic, intimate, and could
usher in a new view of what being human really means.
Intended audience
This book can be used as a textbook in an introductory course on
wearable technology. It provides a broad discussion of the various
technologies underlying wearable devices and how those devices could be
designed for acceptance by the mainstream population. Current practitioners
of wearable research will find it useful in giving them an overview of the
many areas outside their own that are relevant to wearables and that may
form the context in which they conduct their research. Finally, this book will
prove useful to anyone interested in a broad overview of wearable
technology.
