Week 1 - Research.

To begin my project I began by researching existing wearable technology products that are popular on the market. The various products range from clothing to help people who suffer from certain health problems to function easier in the day to day lives to products that make accessing your messages and calls easier. The most popular and well known wearable technology products are devices such as the apples watch and google glass. 

The apple watch is a sleek, light and extremely durable, ceramic design which a finish that won’t scratch or tarnish. It is beautifully constructed and a high quality design. It handles messages well and is also a solid fitness tracker. Its full of hundreds of apps and you can send and receive voice calls via an iPhone. There are lots of design choices and the watch stores music for local playback over Bluetooth. You can make easy wrist payments which makes life a lot easier.  

I visited the apple store to play around with this product. I think the concept behind this design is great and versatile especially for people who are constantly busy and use their phone a lot. I like the way this product looks like an ordinary accessory but does a whole lot more – this is something I want to incorporate into my design. There are some downsides however such as the apps being slow to load and the interface can be rather confusing.  

Another product that I researched into was Ringly. Ringly is a smart ring that uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone and will both light up and vibrate when you receive a notification. What I think is great about this product is that you can customize what colors and vibrations you want to alert you for different apps and even specific people. This design is a wearable that appeals more towards woman. Woman like to have a clean and simplistic look and this ring is perfect for this as they can look classy and receive notifications at the same time. The ring is battery powered and can be charged by being placed in a box that comes with the product.

I tried out this ring out myself as it is owned by Tine who works at Ravensbourne. Something that really appeals to me about the design of this product is that it looks like an ordinary stone ring and I could not tell it had technology built inside of it until it started flashing. The fact that it is discrete is something I want to incorporate into my final design.

My thorough research into existing products has exposed me to various different types of wearables on the market.