This article was taken from the November 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
There is an unwritten rule among watchmakers that if a timepiece does not run for a year on its battery, it can't be called a watch. Yet our wristwatches barely do more than tell the time. By contrast, we've learned to put our mobile phones on charge every night, while expecting near continuous innovation from them. Wristwatch innovation has been limited to sports products, and nobody ever puts their watch on charge.
High-end models essentially function as jewellery; they are familiar status symbols. But things are about to change. The convergence of key technology factors could bring us the first real James Bond-style watches.
The wristwatch has changed very little in the past century. Even the digital watch had little long-term impact. Efforts have been made to combine style with devices such as heart-rate monitors, compasses and altitude meters. But these have remained niche, partly due to complexity of use; they feature antiquated LCD user interfaces, and hooking them up to your PC is clunky. Compare this with the kind of experience from a touchscreen smartphone synched with your PC and cloud services, and it's clear why users are underwhelmed. Now we are seeing developments that could reinvent the watch.
The first is hardware innovation with distributed sensors, such as trainers fitted with pedometers and GPS receivers. Multi-device experiences based on these sensors should become common, leading to web services that can aggregate the data. This has already started, led by Nike+, and will enable service extensions and whole new kinds of mashups, with the wrist at their core.
Mass adoption occurs with significant user-experience innovations. This happens now when an open software platform leads to a killer application, and it is probably what will kick-start the wristwatch revolution. Touch, gestures and pressure will be key. Soon, watch-sized processing power will be able to support an open operating system; touch displays and panels are small and bright enough, and communication is energy-efficient enough to provide connectivity. These factors will push "smartwatch" usability to a whole new level.
The wristwatch sector is ready to be disrupted. And once it becomes a fertile place for innovation, with an ecosystem for development, super-luxury status symbols will be edged aside by technology that improves our lives. We'll know it's happening when a Rolex starts to look as pointless as a £50,000 diamond-encrusted phone.
Christian Lindholm is managing partner at service design consultancy Fjord. He was previously at Nokia, where he invented the Navikey user interface
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
