People viscerally engage with their personal technology devices. Recent studies indicate that we spend 6.5 minutes of every hour awake with our phone, and even more time than we do with our partner. Anecdotally I have heard that we have mobile in our hand more often than we are wearing pants.
Fortunately we adapt. At least in my experience etiquette now precludes phones being left on tables during meals or friends reading during a conversation. We modify our behavior to selectively utilize and then put away our technology. Send that message and the device is then relegated back into the dark, invisible recess of our pockets or bag.
What made mobiles initially so pervasive as information access devices was that they were prevalent, but more importantly non-invasive. Unlike a laptop which creates a physical perceived wall between the user and public – a phone masqueraded like a hollowed book as a normal device in which a person could hide the internet. This cloak faded as people acculturated the new interfaces.
Displays continue to shrink and conform. The Kindle broadly introduced the concept of a screen that performs as a book, and little else – affording an acceptance much as someone reading the paper. We now have the emergence of a new paradigm of social device interaction.
Fourth Screen
In the early 20th century, at the birth of aviation pilots found it precarious to operate their aircraft while using pocket watches to plan flight paths. As a result, wristwatches were created to enable pilots to quickly and constantly monitor the time without removing their hands from the flight stick. This new heads-up type display became extremely popular over the following century until it was in fact replaced by the aforementioned mobile phone.
But the wrist-watch again has the opportunity to replace our pocketed phones and provide us with a heads-up interface to our connected devices. The recent Pebble Watch displays incoming messages, calls, and can even be extended to call to various web services for weather, delivery information, and location.
This is not entirely new. I had a DataLink watch in 1995 that wirelessly synchronized to my computer via a mesmerizing flickering display. These smartwatches, dating back to 1972, have iterated through popular and usable formats but, like the early smartphones or a web desktop required several cycles to truly establish. More recently Samsung released their Galaxy Gear Watch and you have been able to wear your iPod Nano as a watch for a few years. There are rampant rumors that Apple is working on a Watch.
Google Glass is the harbinger of ocular augmentation that directly overlay on our visual field. There already exists a backlash over the obtrusive glowing screens and the concern if someone is paying attention to you, referencing something, or even photographing you; much to the chagrin of nearby people .
Ambient Awareness
Connected watches and other wearable devices offer a larger opportunity for ambient awareness. Our sensor-laden mobile phones, replete with microphone, light sensor, accelerometers, and GPS, are enclosed in dark caves of our pockets; missing so many contextual clues.
By contrast our wrists remain exposed – constantly dappled by the light, reverberating from the punctuated sounds, sensitive to air temperature changes, visible to wireless signals, and even experiencing a wide range of motions from walking to waving, shaking hands, and opening doors.
As a highly-ambient information display, the watch offers an unparalleled platform. Consider also that Apple bought Color, a team experienced with multi-sensor fusion and device content distribution and a future of integrated contextual passive alerts with casual interaction appears imminent.
Surreptitious Engagement
In the end, computing is becoming ubiquitous, pervasive, and non-invasive. We accept new technology with its foibles and obligations but we ultimately desire it to blend into our periphery where we can always engage, but never interfere.
Fortunately it is still about the human interaction, even if we get a little machine help in the process.