Watches enjoy a renaissance as accessories

A host of connected smart watches will emerge in 2013, with the phone becoming a new digital hub in this “personal body network.” Media poster child Pebble will be the tipping point for early adopters, while MuteWatch 2.0 looks likely to push functionality to new levels.

But creators face tough product choices between form and functionality, making 2013 the most interesting year in watches for decades. Meta Watch, for example, has taken the path of following form instincts, while Basis chases a pure functionality route. For the past 80 years form has won — will 2013 turn things in the other direction for watches?

What to watch for in 2013:

• Smart watch makers could stumble on a killer app
• Will touch disrupt the market with exciting experiences?
• Can Casio, Suunto and Polar shake their complex button legacies?
• How will Swatch react?

Functional jewelry as armbands takes off

The functional arm and wristbands pioneered by Nike FuelBand and Jawbone Up are setting a powerful trend and sidestepping the functional and aesthetic legacy of wristwatches. A flood of new wristbands is emerging such as Disney World’s Magic Band, which stores guest information and acts as ticket, room key, ride pass and more.

The smartest bands will track a user’s pulse, sleep patterns and more, helping to paint a holistic picture of wellness. However, a high degree of style will become increasingly important as functionality becomes standardized. Luxury brands like Vertu will create iPhone accessories costing far more than any phone. But flexible or curved ultra-bright OLED screens remain in the lab for another year.

What to watch for in 2013:

• Luxury brands enter the functional armband space
• Waterproof designs
• Personalisation and “charm” style options
• Wrist-based pulse sensors

Audio wearables shape luxury electronics

Prominent headphones have become a must-have accessory of the street-smart digerati, while in-ear systems are also pushing looks and fidelity to new levels. Now the pre-existing luxury brands are taking notice of these shifts. But changing the distribution landscape will be a challenge, and the traditional pure audio brands will start to feel the squeeze.

New high-end edgy brands like Monster, Jawbone and Parrot are shaping the market, while Logitech UE will continue to make a dent with a great price/quality/style ratio. The high margins of a luxury product, combined with niche tech desirability, is the goal.

What to watch for in 2013:

• Will luxury brands market themselves in the electronics sector?
• Will the breadth of the $250+ headsets grow?

Sensors connect our everyday objects

Retro-fitting smartness into everyday objects is one of the most fascinating trends we will be living through. It’s where the Internet of Things and wearable technology converge.

The beauty of this is that it gives users the power to decide which objects should be made smart, and developers can create the optimal software to track it: keys, a jacket – even your car.

Pill-shaped, cube-shaped and stickers will be typical form factors. The Nike+ sensor pills were simply the “Neanderthal” stage of this development. Bluetooth 4.0 is a crucial enabler, taking everyday objects into a new world.

What to watch for in 2013:

• Pioneering telecom companies to launch early solutions.
• Value to be unlocked in visualizing data based on objects around us.

Wearables get dressed up

The Fitbit Zip (see disclosure below) and Misfit Shine are the first generation of transformational wearables that can be “dressed” with covers and ornamentation. We’ll see this trend rapidly extend to more products: for example, footwear covers for bicycling, or watertight wristband covers for swimming, as well as style-driven covers for social situations.

Initially the covers will be non-functional, but eventually they will inform the wearable inside, enabling instant adaptation of sensor software. We will see covers become more valuable than the sensors they encase.

What to watch for in 2013:

• Hobbyists produce covers for online sale.
• Jewellery partnerships for style covers emerge.

Sensor platform wars begin in the bedroom

The quantified self movement is the living lab of the wearables business, with thousands of personal guinea pigs tracking everything in their lives. Its impact in shaping the next data agenda will be crucial as privacy concerns grow. Owning a personal data platform is seen as a strategic control point, but monetization remains unclear.

There is the question of who owns the habit-creating interface. Withings’ smart scale has moved into the bedroom, aiming to shape daily habits and becoming a clear trendsetter here. My data, and how can it be used, remains in flux, as handsets strive to gather ever richer levels of information.

What to watch for in 2013:

• How are proprietary platforms of Nike, Fitbit and Withings opening up to developers?
• Will platforms like Evernote create Evernote Life?
• Can open source platforms gain momentum in time?
• Will we see context-aware phones in the second half of 2013?

Apps make wearables’ data actionable

Wearables will also begin to disrupt app development. This has already started with fitness apps, and is set to branch out to life recording and social features. And although users may perceive the cloud and the PC interface as mainly a passive back-up for their data, these will also become crucial for community data analysis and social media enablement.

Development platforms are now mature, and will soon provide additional sensors for data collection. The phone becomes the new digital hub, as its bigger canvas allows for more personality and a bigger overview, and high-resolution screens help enable rich data visualizations.

What to watch for in 2013:

• Jawbone UP app overhaul
• Popular apps get sensor front ends (home sensors, scales, bike pods)
• Will leading app creators like RunKeeper create own line of wearables to increase loyalty?
• Will Facebook come to you, on a wearable?

Sensors in labs reveal our souls

Sensor development is exploding in labs and startups around the world. For example, the Muse headband provides a real-time view of the brain emotionally shaping your e-mails, while the Vibe necklace shows your stress levels — and these are just the beginning.

We will see 6-axis and 9-axis accelerometers. New forms of wrist based pulse sensors will make pulse reading an everyday thing. Hacks of favorite objects will emerge in new forms like Oyster card rings. These are providing inspiration for the future and most importantly they are simply ideal platforms for learning.

What to watch for in 2013:

• How will the ear be used as a sensor hub?
• Will we see the first flexible display in 2013?
• Will we change our habits from 5,000 readings per second?

Google glass becomes a social transformer

Transforming sunglasses from a fashion accessory into a functional interface will herald a social revolution. Google’s decision to build Project Glass “in public” is a brave one, as changing consumer perceptions will take years. That’s partly because the intimacy of an embedded user interface transforms all our perceptions of privacy. We can’t assume that everyone will readily accept being recorded all the time, or will welcome the idea of an interface between them and the world at every point.

Hopefully Google will have the patience to persevere, while inviting early adopters to participate in 2013 should steer Project Glass in new creative directions.

What to watch for in 2013:

• Reactions from the earliest adopters
• Direction, size and profile of the privacy movement
• User behaviour around recording and recollection
• Response from developers
• How will Luxottica react?

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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Our RoadMap book contains 10 interviews and essays with some of the leading thinkers in web, mobile, product and device design, including Mike McCue CEO of Flipboard, Nest CEO Tony Fadell, designer Christian Lindholm, and the head of design for Parlay Labs, Scott Jenson.

Here’s our TOC:

1. The reinvention of the store for a connected world, interview with George Blankenship, Tesla Motors
2. 10 rules for designing the future, essay by Christian Lindholm, designer, entrepreneur
3. Attention to detail: designing for new frontiers, interview with Hosain Rahman, Jawbone
4. Marching backwards into the future, essay by Scott Jenson, Parlay Labs
5. The magic of good design, interview with Tony Fadell, Nest Labs
6. Find the story in your product, images & photos, Oren Jacob, Bobby Podesta, ToyTalk
7. The call of beauty over data, interview with Mike McCue, Flipboard
8. The qualified self: online identity finally comes of age, essay by Edward Aten, Swift.fm
9. Using data to design for your ears, interview with Tom Conrad, Pandora
10. The rise of augmented intelligence and data mapping, essay by Sean Gourley, Quid

Down the road you’ll be able to buy an ebook version of our book from GigaOM Books, but the printed and bound version will only be available to attendees at the RoadMap event. RoadMap will kick off bright and early this coming Monday morning (November 5)! Yes, it is rapidly approaching. See our awesome speaker list here, and buy the few tickets remaining here.

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• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• How to stand out in the app development game

Harish Rao, CTO, Global Infrastructure Services at Capgemini, suggested that CIOs answer this question in the Post-PC world: “We know the consumerization of enterprise is growing with both new devices and apps. How do I bring this into a non-denying mode of acceptance with caution? The challenge is to understand, digest, and exploit this movement for business purposes.” Rao noted that the most open-minded and agile enterprises will likely be the most successful in harnessing this change.

Part of the problem is the sheer number of devices, and likewise, the number of platforms finding their way into the corporate world. COO of Box, Dan Levin said the typical IT shop has 5 operating systems to manage now, requiring a next-generation set of solutions. Harish agrees, noting that we previously saw a ratio of 1 employees to 1.2 devices in the past. “Now it’s 1 to X and we don’t know what X is,” he said.

Levin himself carries no less than 7 devices to manage his workday: 2 laptops, 2 phones and 3 tablets. “I grab the one whose form factor is most suited to my task. And I want all my apps, content, access to be provisioned transparently across all of those devices,” Levin said. Surely that’s a nightmare for today’s IT unit. But there is at least one way to mange this problem while also providing data security.

“Simplicity is a given,” said Christian Lindholm, Board Advisor at Fjord. “Design-centric solutions are transforming and setting the trend. Simplification on the front end will solve some of these problems with multiple OSs.” Whether that’s virtual machines or remote access across devices, PCs and the cloud will depend on a business’s particular needs and resources.

Of course, resources are budgeted, so that’s a constraint. The BYOD crowd is getting around even that, however. Harish noted a “black market” for cloud services is cropping up. Instead of dealing with restrictive corporate policy and finances, employees are pulling out credit cards and their Amazon Web Services account to get things done. One way or another then, the BYOD crowd is going to use the hardware, software and services of their own choosing in this post-PC world. You can fight it and lose good talent or you can embrace it and look for opportunity.

Check out the rest of our Structure Europe 2012 live coverage here, and a video recording of the session follows below.

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After decades of click-and-scroll based interfaces for phones, the touch interface has effectively taken over, thanks to the success of the iPhone, and every mobile device maker is trying to catch up and figure out how to take advantage of it. That’s what Christian Lindholm — a managing partner of mobile design firm Fjord and a former handset designer for Nokia — told the GigaOM Mobilize conference today. Lindholm’s firm has helped design apps and services such as BBC’s iPlayer and Yahoo Go, and the designer is a former vice-president of global mobile services for Yahoo.

“Phones have been, and probably always will be, hit products,” Lindholm said in a discussion with Om Malik. “Whoever gets that hit is going to make billions,” he added, and Apple has clearly had the biggest hit in years. “When I was at Nokia, we tried to perfect the click-and-scroll user interface, and I think we nailed that.” In the past two years, Lindholm said, “Apple has nailed touch, and everyone is scrambling to catch up.”

The designer said that he sees touch evolving into several different categories of device in the future: one he called “big touch,” which would include devices such as the iPad (which Lindholm referred to as his “maxi Pad”), and that there will be a race to see “who has the balls to put the biggest display in their pocket.” Another category would be the standard 60-millimeter-wide phone form factor, but with touch, and then a third category would be what Lindholm called “small touch” — meaning devices that will be very small, possibly worn around the neck like jewelry, and will use touch but also smart keys and voice input.

Lindholm said that one thing this new class of devices could use as an interface is what he called “smart keys,” which would respond differently depending on how a user presses them or in which sequence. The designer illustrated this by touching Om’s shoulder and then squeezing his hand, asking “why can’t I have that kind of relationship with products, where if I squeeze them hard they respond faster?” Devices have to get smarter at understanding the context that a user is experiencing them in, Lindholm said, and right now they are “still at the Neanderthal level.”

http://cdn.livestream.com/grid/LSPlayer.swf?channel=gigaomtv&clip=pla_96858338-6da1-40e9-84ae-f6d96be31edc&autoPlay=false

Let’s just say Lindholm knows mobile user interfaces really well. In this video interview, he chats with me about the iPhone, Android, and the current problems Nokia faces. He discusses the Maemo platform, Nokia tablets, and how difficult it is to build a mobile operating system. Lindholm talks about why a typical mobile OS has a shelf life of nearly 10 years, and from that perspective, both Android and the iPhone have a good future. If you have time, watch this video interview with him.

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