Wearable technology is a category of electronic devices that can be worn as accessories, embedded in clothing, implanted in the user’s body, or even tattooed on the skin.
Case 1: Reimagine your phone without an interface
I would make a smart ring. The smart ring would be a glowing LED ring that gives off light. When someone wants to call you the ring glows yellow. If you spin the ring to the left/anti-clockwise, the ring turns red and the call has been declined. If you spin the ring to the right/clockwise, the ring turns green and the call has been answered.
The ring would allow the user to stop carrying their phone the entire time with them as they can always be reached from the ring. However, the ring only has calling functionality so the user will not be distracted from Instagram or other social media. The ring also does not display any notifications except for calling. Notifications are a large reason why so many people pick up their phone as they want to react straight away to something. By limiting notifications, it limits the need for users to pick up their phone.
The sensors used would be a gyroscope (to see which way the ring has been rotated), microphone (to detect and transmit what words have been spoken by the user), speaker (let the user hear the other person on the phone).
The actuator that would be used would be a vibrational component. When the user is getting called, the ring should vibrate to let the user know when someone is trying to reach them.
Extra Research on wearables:
FORM Smart Swim Goggles
FORM uses AR techonology to display on the simming goggles how fast the user is swomming, how fast they swam yesterday, how long they have been swimming for and how long they still have to swim. There are also different performace metrics like calories, heart rate, stroke rate and a timer. The goggles conenct to a smart app where the user can see a breakdown of all the metrics and compare them to their previous swims.
I find it really impressive that this wearable has been made to survive constantly in the water. Electronics aren’t normally great friends with the water as they fry/break with even the slightest amount of water exposure.