Design Trends in the Wearable Technology Age
Wearable technology has arrived and is all set to sweep today’s technology into the background. Its arrival brings a whole new challenge to the table, as new, obscure and uncharted form factors are likely to emerge every day.
In order to deliver the same magical experience as in web and smartphones, designers now need to adapt and innovate quickly. What compounds the problem is the need to target each individual screen, the diversity of which ranges from glasses to watches, and from accessories to apparels. This essentially means designers are set to lose control of visual borders. Time has come for them to think beyond size, aspect ratios and resolutions. So, the million dollar question today is how design trends in wearable technology will evolve. Here’s our take on it:
Minimalist Design to Rule
Minimalism has been a design trend for the last few years. In the age of the wearable it is set to become more pronounced. And that’s because wearable, with minimal interfaces, provide no room for overdoing. Designers need to take a whole different approach in this case – craft designs to allow the content to take the center stage. To enable this, they may have to work more closely with software and hardware engineers than they have ever done in the past.
Information at Finger Tips
The whole purpose of wearing technology as opposed to having it in the pocket is that the information is a lot quicker to access. Ensuring immediate access to information can make a device more acceptable. Designers need to take meticulous care to eliminate design flaws that lead to latency.
Font-Size Does Matter
When the information is short and gets displayed on varied screens, each differing from the other in unusual ways, font size will play the all-important role of making the content user-friendly. As a designer, you need to optimize the font size in a fluid way so that it adjusts itself automatically to the screens of diverse wearable devices.
Interactive Design
Wearable devices consist of small screens and so users would ideally prefer simple interactivity. Voice navigation, for instance, can help one call out the actions, so can be a great interactive element in wearables. But that again depends on the target audience. As a designer, you need to craft a dynamic design keeping in mind how best you can meet consumer needs.
Better Connectivity
Incorporating broad network of structures into the design element can increase adoption of wearables. Again to make it more user friendly, the interface design should be such that users can connect to different networks just by a swipe or a call out.
Besides these, a designer may have to do away with features that may add to the clumsiness of the device. These include pop-ups and need to enter lengthy texts.
For designers, the need to think out of the box is more than ever before. Screens will always be there, but will come in weird and unpredictable shapes. The best way to tackle this seemingly insurmountable challenge, is to enable the UI to respond and adapt to its environment fluidly. And to achieve this, designers need to have a more holistic and integrated approach to designing screens.