I have read some interesting reviews and articles about the cool new hardware. For example this one: What The Apple Watch Could Be.
I do not have any wearables at home but so far, I am not so excited on having some. The feedback I was able to observe was rather mixed. Starting with I got too many notifications, it is crucial to configure the notifications properly to I got interrupted still.
Let's try to step out of the box and try to redefine the term wearables by specifying the requirements.
- I want to be able to get notified about important events - an incoming message, phone call, appointment in my calendar, anything around me.
- I want to be able to have this type of notification at hand, without the need to find my phone (yes, that lazy I am).
- I want to be able have a phone call, read a message, lookup any short information.
- I must be able to suppress anything of the above easily when I want to run in a distraction free mode.
- As a bonus, it would be great if it could prevent some dangerous situations for example.
- I must be able to continue my daily routines while doing anything on this list.
What do you think of now? Apple Watch or Google Glass? The later was stopped already. And both of them violate the last requirement.
How about headphones? Many of us wear them already almost all the day. Let me try to explain to you what my most favorite wearables would look like.
First, we need to start with the best hardware inside. The Headphones are able to connect to WiFi, 3G or Bluetooth. The Bluetooth might be soon replaced by something that does not take 3 seconds to get connected.
They are still Headphones, so their main task is to play music or sound. We need a HiFi Digital to Analog converter. Not like all those noisy wireless headphones we have nowadays. The sound must be crystal clear.
The Headphones should be able to operate standalone (without any mobile phone near to them), playing my music stored in the cloud, getting notifications on emails.
The Headphones should be able to connect to my mobile phone to tell me about text messages or incoming calls. The Headphones also have microphone in it so I can make a call. The microphone can be used to filter outside noise while playing music too. Btw. can you imagine having a phone call with your wrist?
I can configure what happens to the music while a notification comes. Either the music keeps playing in the background or it can be paused. I can browse through the emails, messages, agenda using simple voice commands. Everybody is used to people having phone calls on the street so this even does not look weird. The Headphones can also have a couple of buttons in case you wanted to stay quiet. And of course, you can control the Headphones with your mobile phone, smart TV or tablet.
A nice voice of your choice can read out loud subjects of your emails. None of them actually gets marked as read (unless asked) for you to still have to check them.
You can keep walking or driving a car with these Headphones.
For hearing impaired, the Headphones can work as an amplifier. They can be sensitive to ambulance/police siren and selectively amplify that over your playing music (mishearing an ambulance can be dangerous).
When I want to enter the distraction free mode, I can simply take the Headphones off. They can detect it so they stop the notifications, pause your music and remain silent. Of course you can just stop the notifications and keep listening to the music, there is a button for it. This is especially important because I usually do not want to get the notifications all day long. I want to process them in batches.
It would be also possible to configure the Headphones when to tell you about all the notifications that happened since the last check.
The Headphones can easily measure your heart beats and depending on the time of the day and the location, they can fine tune the music style according to your current mood. Or they can control your smart home and dim the lights when you fall asleep at 10pm while listening to the music on your couch at home.
Wouldn't it be great to have such Headphones? So far it looks that I need to start producing them.