Spotlight on Experience: March Edition

From the launch of Android Wear to Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus to Intel’s acquisition of BASIS Science, we saw a lot of wearable technology design chatter in March. The latest design frontier seems to be taking a giant leap toward becoming mainstream.

How will wearable technology reshape everyday tasks such as telling time and writing text messages? What would happen if vendors began personalizing experiences based on real-time biometric data, such as your heart rate or time slept? And what could this mean for our privacy and security? We’re excited to see these sorts of discussions on the rise. A future where everything is connected might be here sooner than you think.

Here is a round-up of some articles that got us talking over the past month:

• If Google Glass is Just a 'Prototype' Why is it Pairing Up with Luxury Sports Eyewear? by Jon Phillips, IDG News — Google announced a strategic partnership with Luxottica, makers of Ray-Ban and Oakley, to manufacture and distribute Google Glass frames. It’s a fascinating partnership indicating the importance of design and distribution in bringing this bleeding-edge technology to a mainstream audience. Will Google succeed in broadening its appeal?


• Google Wearables 2.0: How Android Wear breaks from Glass by Scott Stein, CNET — In March, Google released a preview SDK for Android Wear, its Android-based wearables platform. Unlike Google Glass, Android Wear isn’t a prototype; it’s a fully-formed version that’ll be baked into lots of apps and devices. CNET gives us the lowdown on what the SDK says about Google’s vision of mainstream wearables. “Google Glass is all about being on your face. Android Wear shifts that focus to the wrist,” Stein notes.


• Apple’s Healthbook App Gives a Glimpse of What an iWatch Could Possibly Do by Kevin Tofel, GigaOm — Leaked information about Apple’s upcoming Healthbook app for iOS shed light on the types of quantified data you may be able to track on an iPhone. Tofel notes that the app will also be able to track “heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels in the blood, sugar levels and hydration,” although the current iPhone can’t actually monitor any of these functions. This makes us wonder whether Apple will make this possible in the next iPhone, or if it will release an API for existing wearable manufacturers. Either way, we can’t wait to see Apple’s vision for this space!


• Why Apple Can’t Match Google’s All-seeing New Smartwatches by Christopher Mims, Quartz — According to Mims, Google will beat Apple in the wearables space because it’s gotten a huge head start in one area: predictive technology. He writes: “The more Google knows about you, the better it can predict what you might want to do or know about next. And having an always-on companion like an Android-powered smartwatch can only make Google’s knowledge of the people it makes money from through advertising that much more complete.”


• Apple, Google and Intel are Laying the Foundation for the Internet of You by Jennifer Darmour, VentureBeat — “Wearable technology is on a collision course with the Internet of everything. When the two collide, we will enter into a new era of the Internet of you,” muses UX designer Jennifer Darmour, in this fascinating analysis. She focuses on the potential of collecting biometric data via wearables to create a personalized experience.

What made your watch list in March? Hit us in the comments section, or @EchoUser on Twitter, to keep the discussion going!