The Wrist is Wasted Real Estate
Nowadays most people I know don’t wear watches. Nearly everyone has a mobile phone and those usually display the time in big huge numbers whenever you’re interested.
However, I really feel like we’re missing some opportunities by not taking full advantage of our wristerly regions. I have two wrists that I want to adorn with something that’s stylish and useful. But I don’t want a boring ole 20th century watch. Yuck.
I do not want to look at my wrist to see what time it is. To be honest, I usually don’t give a damn what time it is.
I don’t want to use a lame tiny stylus.
I don’t want a calculator watch,
or a tv watch
or a weird Japanese watch that just tells time.
No - I want something completely different on my wrist. Here are some ideas:
Imagine something like a watch, but in place of a clock face is an opaque face that lightly glows and changes color according to the program it’s running. It can guide you to a nearby destination via the “getting hot, getting cold” game. It can slowly change from green through yellow to red to let you know of a pending time limit - “I’ll sit here at the bar until the face turns red. I set that to be an hour from now.”
How about a musical instrument? The stones on your bracelet can be used to play notes or beats or whatever. Friends can get together and have mini-jam sessions. Collect new bracelets for new sounds and rhythms.
Maybe in the right form factor we could wear our e-book readers on our wrists. Instead of having to hold something like a kindle, it would be attached to your wrist. You could use a finger on your free hand to navigate and scroll like you do on an iPhone. I can imagine a future flexible OLED screen that would be light enough to do the trick nicely. I guess this could be a decent platform for an always available web browser and media player. I don’t think I’d want to put my wrist up to my ear to use it like a phone though! iWrist maybe?
I like the idea of just plain attractive jewelry that also hides a lot of technology. No need for any interface at all. Your bracelet could house multiple micro-SD cards (or equivalent) wirelessly available to your phone or camera. It could also house a radio transceiver that could be used to unlock your car and/or house and/or office.
Finally I think it would be the perfect host for a tag for augmented reality systems - it would allow AR systems to discover who you are (with links by to your Friend Feed or whatever accounts).
