
The designers of the Pebble Watch realized that a mobile phone is more useful if you don’t have to take it out of your pocket.
Eric Migicovsky didn’t really want a “wearable computer.” When he first conceived of what would become the Pebble smart watch five years ago, as an industrial-design student at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, he just wanted a way to use his smartphone without crashing his bicycle.
The Pebble Watch was selected as one of the 10 best technology breakthroughs for 2013 by the MIT Technology Review. The watch shows only one tidbit at a time, whether a tweet, a txt msg or info about a call; it can also control the volume of the music on your phone, all while your phone is away in your bag.
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513376/smart-watches/
Why It’s Hot
People want simple and easy-to-use interfaces. This enables wearers to absorb information from their mobile phone with merely a glance. With predictions about the advent of wearable computing, it’s easy to see Pebble’s idea being much more popular. By making use of a watch—a classic accessory—Pebble is trying to fit in to long-standing social norms rather than create new ones.