Wearables

With the interest in wearable technology exploding, UX practitioners and development teams need to focus on creating experiences that intuitively fit the rhythm and ecosystem of a user’s daily life. Unfortunately, much like what happened early on with mobile design, wearable UX designers seem to have unlearned many of the best practices and heuristics they employ on, for example, desktop design.

For better or for worse—like it or not—mobile wearables are already changing our lives. Mobile wearable devices form a new generation of personalized technology that knows us better than our closest friends do. How many of your friends know how far you walked or what you ate? The challenge for developing wearable applications is incorporating the proper context to add value potential users haven’t considered—while being sensitive to their privacy.

Prototyping wearable devices used to be something that required specialized skills in electrical engineering, embedded development, and mechanical engineering. Today, thanks to the maker revolution, we can combine our deep knowledge of programming with basic electronics, soldering skills, and access to a 3D printer to create useful devices. In this session, we’ll take a quick tour of some of the options and then do a deep dive into creating a wearable prototype using off the shelf boards.