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While many companies, big and small, have been jumping into the wearables space in recent years, the use-cases for these devices often feels superficial — with fitness perhaps the most compelling scenario at this nascent stage. Yet smartwatches have far richer potential than merely performing a spot of sweat tracking.
The other problem with the current crop of smartwatches is the experience of using apps on wrist-mounted devices does not always live up to the promise of getting stuff done faster or more efficiently. Just having to load an app on this type of supplementary device can feel like an imposition.
If the primary selling point of a smartwatch is really convenience/glanceability the watch wearer really does not want to have to be squinting at lots of tiny icons and manually loading data to get the function they need in a given moment. A wearable needs to be a whole lot smarter to make it worth the wearing vs just using a smartphone.
At the same time, other connected devices populating the growing Internet of Things can feel pretty dumb right now — given the interface demands they also place on users. Such as, for example, connected lightbulbs like Philips Hue that require the user to open an app on their phone just in order to turn a lightbulb on or off, or change the colour of the light.
Which is pretty much the opposite of convenient, and why we’ve already seen startups trying to fix the problems IoT devices are creating via sensor-powered automation....
Wearables need to become more useful and connected devices easier to use in the home for the market to grow.