Wearables
Research
When doing research on wearables, I discovered a fundraiser campaign for a product that I was very interested in.
This is the Motion Sonic by Sony, a piece of wearable technology specifically designed for musicians. This technology takes common musical effects like reverb, low- and hi-pass filters, vibrato, etc. and associates it with a gesture. The wearable then reads the gestures using a motion sensor inside of the wearable to add the effect to whatever instrument you’re playing. This product sadly never released to the public, but I would have loved to see how people would have interacted with it.
What I like most about this product is how natural and intuitive the gestures look for musicians. At the start of the video, you see the keyboard player getting a vibrato and pitch bend effect by wiggling his finger on the keys in much the same way a guitarist would get this effect without the use of this device. I would imagine musicians would very easily be able to incorporate this technology into their own playing because of how intuitive the gestures are.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/motion-sonic#/
Custom wearable concept for blind people
(picture)
When you think about it, blind people don't really have a reason to carry around a smartphone with a giant screen. Some time ago, I saw this video about how blind people use their phones using a screen reader, which does exactly what it sounds like, it reads the screen aloud to the user. This got me thinking about a more efficient way to do this and I thought "Why not convert all the visual information to auditory information and take the whole visual element out of the equation?".
Here are a few ways this wearable could be used by a blind person.
- Accept and decline calls by tapping or double-tapping the braille Y/N buttons on the side of the wearable
- Send and receive texts by using the microphone to convert speech into text (typing was never really an option anyways...)
- Ask questions to the built-in assistant and receive answers just like you would with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, etc.
Since the headset is bone-conducting it doesn't also impair the user's hearing, which is very important for staying aware of their surroundings.