Some companies are actually opting for prominent devices as a way to show off your connectedness, or at least not lose your gadget in the wash. But as batteries get smaller, wearables could become less of a fashion statement and more about a new wave of immersive computing.

Either way, there will be a lot of competition. ABI Research predicts that the global market for wearable computing devices in health and fitness could reach 170 million devices by 2017.

At the end of the day, the design of the wearable and how it feels on your body is only half the battle. Wearable makers are hard at work making sure their gadgets can collect the right data and deliver a service to users that makes the data important and useful in their daily lives. If the body data isn’t helpful, then really, what’s the point?

We created this “bare-bones” infographic of wearable devices that are currently available and that fit the mold for what we see as the future of the connected you: data-driven services, and unobtrusive design. Which ones do you own or want to own? Click on each body section to read more about the companies and devices available.

Google Glass

Google’s “augmented reality” glasses allow you to do anything you’d normally do on your phone or laptop — record video, find directions, message your friends — but without your hands. It’s currently available only to select “creative individuals” in colors Charcoal, Tangerine, Shale, Cotton and Sky and perhaps soon in more attractive styles. ($1,500)

Watches

A number of companies including Motorola, Pebble and Basis Science have all thrown their hats in the connected watch arena. Adding new purpose to a time-warn accessory, these smart watches read texts out loud, play music, and track your exercise and health — in addition to telling time. Apple is even working on a watch that could run iOS. ($115-$300) 

Bracelets

Companies like Jawbone  and Fitbit are marrying data and design for a wearable computing experience that’s seamless and attractive. Their wristbands and bracelets are being used to track fitness, sleep and calories but look like a simple accessory.  ($99-$129)

Jewelry

Sensors are the essential part of all wearable devices. Companies like Misfit and its Shine device use sensors that can also function as jewelry for a seamless way to track your activity. A recent Apple filing shows the company might have even broader ambitions for wearable sensors, too. ($59-$99)

Shoes

Thinkstock

From connected shoes to connected clips and inserts, feet are often the preferred place for activity trackers that show where and how far you’ve run. ($ price varies on technology)

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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• Analyzing the wearable computing market

The $149.99 chest strap is available now for pre-order with delivery this spring. A module in the strap tracks and stores up to 16 hours of heart rate and caloric information. The data can transfer to an optional $199.99 watch or to a mobile phone app on handsets that are Bluetooth Smart capable. The product page explains WILLPower as the combination of ”how long you workout, what you did, profile info like gender and weight, and key heart rate measures to give you a single score.”

If I don’t sound enamored by artificial scores for basic fitness data, it’s because I’m not. These numbers only hide the real data that people should know about: caloric expenditure, heart rate training zones, etc. I’m all for simplifying such information if it helps people work out with fewer complications, don’t misunderstand. But as each new health gadget comes to market, it appears as though the real difference is the fake scoring system that’s easiest to market. It just seems silly to me.

I don’t doubt you can get healthier with a Fuel band, Armour39 or other similar device. However, I’ll stick with the basics: A Bluetooth 4.0 heart monitor strap that works with basic apps and a smart watch or phone to actually tell me my heart rate and calories burned.

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In his talk, the designer, who helped build the Nike+, discussed the challenges of making those devices social as a means to get more people to buy them and then use them. When someone tweets about their run it might make you want to check your own fitness scores, for example. Watch the video below and start thinking about how you might rethink design in a world of connected devices — from storytelling to observations about where you sneak a connected product or service in.

If you liked this talk, check out the others here, here or here, or come to our next Internet of Things meetup in Boulder, Colo., next week.

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Fashion is something that will become increasingly important for wearables as they become more mainstream. Connected wristbands — like Nike’s FuelBand and Jawbone UP — will only be adopted by a certain section of the population, and startups like Misfit Wearables are emerging to try to make style and design of their wearable device (the Shine) their differentiating factor.

It’s even more important when the wearable is on your face. The Bluetooth headset, regardless of a product’s sleek design, sends an instant dork signal to anybody passing by.

I love this quote from BaubleBar co-founder Daniella Yacobovsky in the New York Times article on the next thing that wearables like Google Glass need:

“Is it useful? Of course it is. Do I look like a tool? Yeah. I’m not going to wear it.”

At our RoadMap event November 2012, which was focused on connected design, Warby Parker co-CEO and co-founder Dave Gilboa talked about design, fashion and giving consumers what they want. We’ll be hosting the third annual RoadMap later this year in November, and will continue to discuss these subjects. In the meantime, check out Gibloa’s thoughts in this video:

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In the above photo, Google X’s Sarah Price is showing off the original prototype in a slide while sporting the current model, which is way more refined, has a much smaller battery and can still power the glasses for a day. The next prototype — but still an early version — is below.

And finally the current version below that you can see Googlers sporting around the campus and elsewhere (I saw a pair in the wild at a Mission pub this weekend).

Top two photos courtesy of Jurvetson, creative commons. Bottom photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk.

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But in a small, brightly-lit lab in an office park behind the Oakland Airport in Alameda, Calif., a young startup called Imprint Energy, is using research created at the University of California, Berkeley to develop just such a battery that could free gadget makers from the constraints of the standard lithium ion battery. Well, that’s the plan anyways.

Using zinc, instead of lithium, and screen printing technology, Imprint Energy is already churning out low volumes of its ultra-thin, energy-dense, flexible, and low cost rechargeable batteries for pilot customers.

The battery barrier

The problem is, it’s hard to make standard lithium ion batteries thin and flexible, explained Imprint Energy CEO Devin MacKenzie to me in an interview in the startup’s lab last week. There’s a “lot of packaging,” required to seal off the highly reactive lithium in the battery from the environment, said MacKenzie. If you’ve ever seen YouTube videos of lithium batteries that catch on fire in the air or water, you know why those barriers are needed.

But this architecture also makes lithium ion batteries rigid and potentially bulky. Even the slimmest laptops like the Macbook Air, or tablets like the iPad, faced design limitations created by the size and weight of the batteries. The Nike FuelBand uses a curved (called conformal in battery terms) lithium polymer battery, but if you look closely at the shape of the band (photo left), the battery is the only part of the bracelet that isn’t pliable.

Upsides of zinc

Imprint Energy’s battery tackles the problem of rigidity and bulkiness by simply throwing out the lithium. The company, which now has a staff of 8, was founded in 2010 by U.C. Berkeley PHD students Christine Ho and Brooks Kincaid, and more they recently raised seed funding from Dow Chemical and CIA fund In-Q-Tel.

The company uses zinc for the anode part of the battery, and combines that with a solid polymer electrolyte and a cathode made of a metal oxide. A battery is made up of an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, with an electrolyte in between — zinc ions (in Imprint’s case) travel from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte, creating a chemical reaction that allows electrons to be harvested along the way.

MacKenzie tells me that while zinc has been used for years in batteries, it’s been difficult to make zinc batteries rechargeable. That’s because when zinc is combined with a liquid electrolyte it creates something called dendrites, which are tiny fibers that grow and get in the way of the charging reaction. Imprint Energy solved this hurdle by using an electrolyte made of a solid polymer combined with the zinc.

Using zinc means Imprint’s batteries can have far less “packaging” because zinc isn’t highly reactive with the environment. In other words, the batteries can be made much more thinly. They can also be made as tiny as a few hundred microns thick (the width of a couple human hairs). Batteries that small could power tiny digital smart labels, like freshness detector stickers on food.

Zinc also makes Imprint’s batteries more safe and less toxic than lithium-based batteries. The team at Imprint can work on the zinc batteries in the open air. And the zinc batteries are a safer option for creating devices that sit on — or even in — the body. Imagine a lithium battery powering a heart device inside a person’s chest cavity, and the battery leaks lithium into the person’s body. Yikes.

Printable batteries

The other innovation that Imprint Energy has developed is that it’s printing out its batteries using standard screen printing technology. Most batteries are made by coating the materials onto foils, which are then assembled into cells.

In Imprint Energy’s Alameda lab, CEO MacKenzie shows me one of two battery printing machines on site and a variety of screens that look sort of like t-shirt silk screening screens. The battery materials are printed like ink onto the screens in whatever shapes the client requires. Customers will pay a premium for batteries created to the custom shapes of their devices.

The company can churn out 100 cells a day on the machines in its lab. That’s tiny in the world of the battery giants in Asia, but it’s large enough to get samples out to potential customers. Down the road — potentially two to three years — the company will scale up manufacturing to a large commercial scale, but it won’t likely be building its own factories. More likely, it will work closely with manufacturing partners or license its technology.

An eye on wearables

While it’s still early days for Imprint Energy, the team’s end goal is the wearable electronics market, both for consumers (like Nike’s FuelBand and the FitBit line) as well as the health sector (such as implanted monitors). The wearables industry could reap the most benefits from the novel and thin shapes of the batteries, as well as the safe and less toxic materials.

Co-founder Kincaid is a wearables buff. He shows me his own Nike FuelBand on his wrist during the interview, and he says he’s eagerly awaiting the arrival of his Misfit Shine. For the wearables industry, Imprint Energy’s zinc poly batteries could enable an entirely new type of device that’s more hidden, more streamlined, or more functional. Given that wearable electronics is an emerging sector, and one that could become a lot more mainstream over the next few years, disruptive design could ultimately completely change the wearable industry.

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Watch this Google concept video for a better idea (or to be utterly terrified):

While they were deemed stylish enough by legendary designer Diane Von Fürstenburg to put them on the catwalk, there’s still a very big split between those who instantly shout in horror and crow about security risks and those who instead envision a new dawn in computing. Perhaps they both have a point: For some they will be the ultimate intrusion yet for others they could revolutionize business or the way we interact with the world. The truth is, we just don’t know yet. One thing is for sure, however: Some have more to gain than others

Generally, I am pro Glass: After all, technology is rarely evil (technology doesn’t harm people – people harm people!) But plainly speaking, this is the first piece of tech I have seen in a long time that has the potential to truly change everything. Forget tablets, forget smartphones, the technology behind Glass is not an extension of you, it literally becomes part of you. (Crucially, unlike other tech to-date, it also leaves your hands free – a facet you can see the porn barons already dreaming about.) What is most curious, though, is that I’ve yet to see the media jump on Glass and champion it during this embryonic period. Why are we not hearing about landmark partnerships being done between Google and media powerhouses? (Or is it that Google is not playing ball with them?) Why,  as with tablets, mobile and so many developments before, is the media industry so timid that they wait to be involved before leading the discussion?

Let’s take a look at a few reasons why Google Glass is poised to change everything:

Zero setup = perfection

The idea from the start is that you pop them on and truly just carry on being you – they’ll take care of the rest. This is the ultimate device that can not only benefit from contextual information but also demonstrated behavior, such as time of reading, likes, dislikes and so on. The system will quickly pick up on those variables (among many others) and soon enough take care of it automatically: no need anymore for RSS feeds, no circling, no preferences. Just read as you normally would, and it will get smarter and more precise and better at predicting your needs and wants. This fixes my main issues with the way we get news today, which still requires too much input from the user; instead Glass just gets out of the way.

Multivariate testing

Or, in other words, testing lots of variables to see which produce the best results then upweighting that combination. Adaptive marketing will be a heavily used term next year and in subsequent years as we react to the myriad devices giving agencies, planners and publishers oodles of delicious data to crunch. News should be making huge efforts to tailor their product to the individual based on their social and interest graphs (groups, likes, shares, purchases). Imagine a layout that could be tested and then updated because a different layout led to greater consumption. Currently this could really exist only on smartphones via apps, but has not been hugely raved about because of tracking issues.

Think beyond the device

Imagine an army of reporters all using these devices. It makes true real-time, breaking news very possible – in fact, it will redefine the very notion of what news is: no longer organized but reactive. Are the days of phone footage, or images being sent via email as news breaks numbered?  Imagine how ordinary people could become live reporters simply because they happen to be right by the action. When an incident occurs, a quick mobile ping and you’ll know who is around to turn their head and broadcast live images and video. I’d certainly watch more of that than fuzzy, ultra-zoomed snapshots grabbed off Twitter.

Advertising ROI

While Google has been less than clear when talking about built-in advertising opportunities, it’s obvious that with the advances in augmented technologies like BlippAR, Aurasma and Obvious Engine image recognition is still sexy and – when used correctly – the results are good. The eye-tracking capabilities Google Glass poses should make not only media agencies and advertisers salivate but editorial departments as well. Shouldn’t better measurement, placement, contextualization, optimization of editorial (not to mention ads) be what we’re all fighting for?  Now we might have something that can do it! What’s the holdup?

This is just a taste of what’s going to possible from what my tiny noodle can dream up. The implications of these technologies are pretty staggering when you think about the big bad data wolf that’s smiling sweetly at us in the distance. Whether we like or know it, we’re going to be wearing more and more technology. When you consider the quickly expanding wearable tech trend – not just sensors in bracelets and shoes but actual things – the future looks clear.  We’ve already got Nike wristbands, headphones in hats, T-shirts that tweet, bras that help with fitness (?!), sleeptrackers, watches with emergency communication systems and about 50 prototype products from Nokia. Suddenly Project Glass doesn’t look like a crazy leap so much as a solid step in the right direction.

As with most new technologies, there are still old problems to address: namely privacy, connectivity and, of course, battery life. The last two are relatively easy to solve but the first is a deep concern for most people. Even at a surface level there are major issues here that could affect adoption (while Google has stated it has no plans to integrate facial recognition elements, it’s clearly inevitable). But personally I suspect these will be overcome with the gadget-lust/cool factor and general usability the device will inevitably enable.

Then you have the other P-word, piracy. If you think cellphones were an issue for copyright and IP theft, imagine how quickly these bad boys could destroy an industry. Taking that idea further, how would you protect your important documents in a business? What about customer service? Or will they just force us all to be in better control of these things? Ultimately, though, the deciding factor for most issues will be a lot like the success of the Nike Band: the Glass-style technology that eventually takes off will be the one that doesn’t need to be taken off by users.

Right now, this isn’t likely Project Glass for the majority of folks out there, but it does leave me hopeful that future incarnations are close by  (without surgery). Whatever way this technology goes, and I believe it will go far if the marketing continues to be as slick as it has been, it’s clear the nerds – and more importantly the cultural influencers – love Project Glass.

So, media folk, I say this:  Start making connections and beefing up your technology departments. Google I/O (Google’s Developer Conference) attendees were able to sign up for a beta, and they’ll start getting their units very soon. This technology or a version of it is coming, the only question is how soon.

Paul Armstrong is Head of Social for Mindshare; follow him at www.paularmstrong.net or on Twitter @TheMediaIsDying.

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Jawbone, which cut its teeth making noise-cancelling bluetooth headsets for mobile phones, learnt that the hard way. Chastised, it went back to the drawing board, redrew the plans for the gadget and is coming back to the market — again. It is betting that dozens of improvements packed inside the device will help it attract customers again. Another reason to be hopeful — these are early days for wearable computers.

Of course, the device which was designed by  Yves Behar, chief creative officer of the company, doesn’t look too different from the original and has retained much of its design flavor. It still uses a 3.5 mm headphone jack to connect with an iPhone and transfer data to an accompanying iPhone application. It still lacks the wireless connection to either the iPhone or a computer. And it still packs a motion sensor that tracks whether you sleep, walk, run or whatever.

Earlier this week, Hosain Rahman, founder and CEO of the company showed off the new device and also showed a comparison of the innards of the first and second generation devices. From new chips to new materials to even new manufacturing process, Rahman says, that they have put the device through its paces. They tested the device for millions of hours and worked with hundreds of testers to see how the device works in real life.

Rahman, said, they are not taking any chances this time around. Actually he doesn’t have a choice. Since his launch, Nike, the shoemaker has launched FuelBand, a wristband that tracks all your personal physical activity. Nike’s FuelBand is flying off the shelves, thanks to Nike’s massive store network and brand.

It is all about data
For Jawbone, the trick is to not only get people to buy the device, but also to use the accompanying iPhone application to track their personal information — from the amount of sleep, to the steps taken, to the distance walked and calories consumed. And just like the UP’s hardware, Rahman said that they have put a lot of time and effort to make the UP app, more useful and fun — almost like using a social network.

As the device — which remains working for about 10 days with a single charge (which takes about 80 minutes) — begins to gather personal data, it starts to collate it all and become smarter. And eventually the app, will try to help you make better decisions, Rahman said. The trick is to constantly use the device, which feels more comfortable than the original UP, whose edges were too angular to wear comfortably.

The Bottom Line

I have had the device for less than a day and it is hard to form an opinion just yet. I am taking off for New York and taking it along with me and will see how it feels after a week of use. The app, while attractive, hasn’t been put through the paces just yet. Most importantly, it will be a few days before I can offer a reasonable, indepth assessment.

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You’ll hear about these themes from some of the web, mobile, and design industry’s leading thinkers and innovators. Speakers include:

• Perry Chen, CEO, Kickstarter
• David Karp, Founder and CEO, Tumblr
• Ben Silbermann, Co-Founder and CEO, Pinterest
• Kevin Systrom, Co-Founder and CEO, Instagram
• Evan Williams, CEO, The Obvious Corporation
• John Maeda, President, Rhode Island School of Design
• Yves Béhar, CEO, fuseproject, CCO Jawbone
  
• Stefan Olander, VP, Digital Sport, Nike
• Tony Fadell, Founder and CEO, Nest
• Dave Gilboa, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Warby Parker Eyewear
• George Blankenship, VP, Worldwide Sales and Ownership Experience, Tesla Motors
• Alex Ljung, Founder and CEO, SoundCloud
• Katia Beauchamp, Co-Founder, Birchbox
• Paul Mascarenas, CTO and VP, Ford Motor Company Research and Innovation
• Oren Jacob, CEO, ToyTalk
• Jennifer Pahlka, Founder and Executive Director, Code for America
• Bobby Podesta, Head of Creative, ToyTalk
• Scott Wilson, Founder, MINIMAL

Are you as excited as we are to hear from these folks? Attendees will also receive a copy of our limited edition RoadMap book that we’ve created for the event, and which will include interviews and essays from connected design leaders. Get your tickets to RoadMap now before they sell out!

Image courtesy of josullivan.59.

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The two new standards are approved for sensors that will measure elements such as running cadence, stride length, total distance, or cycling speed, distance and pedal cadence to Bluetooth-enabled devices like smartphones, sports watches and cycling computers. Presumably this will boost accuracy in fitness monitoring devices. For example, some devices have a hard time adjusting their calories or effort metrics for running because they don’t take into account a longer or shorter running stride when compared to walking.

Unfortunately, until the emergence of Bluetooth Low Energy makers of the Fitbit (see disclosure) and even the Nike Run profile had to resort to proprietary connection that had a lower energy profile. The net result is those devices require specialized dongles to connect to a computer as opposed to just automatically interfacing with the Bluetooth chip already on board. Hopefully as Bluetooth Low Energy goes mainstream, and the SIG adds more accurate sensor profiles to the Bluetooth ecosystem, those who still have proprietary standards will be more inclined to switch. After all, having your fitness devices on a common standard is a win for consumers.

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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