What's Holding Back Wearables?

The greatest hurdle? Need. Thus far, these gadgets are solutions in search of a problem.

The smaller you make it, the harder it is to see and to interact with. My smart phone has the minimum size display that is useable for me, and it is just as handy on my belt as a watch or google glass would be. And I don't need a watch I have to charge up every night. The one I have resets itself every night to WWWV and charges itself up from sunlight. It tells me the time accurately without any action on my part, which is what a watch should do.

As Brave Sir Robin says, "need".

"...it seems like everyone has a fitness monitor..."

And by 'everyone' you mean 4% of the adult population.

My son occassionally runs in charity 5K events and he sometimes wears one when he does his workout. He's the only person I know who has one.

http://www.wired.com/2013/01/wearables-audience-forrester/

My wife has one but I think it got used once being unlike her self image of being some super athlete who is in a high level of physical fitness and health it told her shes a overweight lazy couch potato.

She disagreed and said it was clearly broken as she broke out into a hard sweat and got winded just taking the velcro strap off that held it to her arm.

Even simpler reasons;

Because:

a) the wearable is designed by a Designer, looks superb but doesn't actually work (Samsung Gear, unreadable & battery hungry)

b) the wearable has been designed by an Engineer and works superbly but makes you look a complete tosser (Google glass)

c) Neither the Engineer nor the Designer give much thought to the user interface. There either isn't one (oops! we forgot about that, tether it to your smartphone) or its just mental. Who in Google thought stroking the side of your face while staring through Glass would look anything but very, very creepy?

Stark's Iron Man wearable is what we want.

Hell I'd settle for Ripleys wearable in Alien®. That would be awesome.