Wearables like Glass solve the problem of people having their faces glued to their phones by gluing their phones to their faces. And people use their faces for social interaction. So face-mounted tech is immediately noticeable and obvious, especially around eyes and ears. Hence, the nickname "glasshole".
Vibration is not new. I recall seeing video of a belt fitted with multiple vibration motors that always vibrated the motor closest to true north. This allowed blindfolded people to navigate across the test field to a predetermined destination.
This puts the same concept into the least noticeable spot on your body: the soles of your feet. Shoes are nearly impossible to forget when you go out, and we are already well conditioned to tolerate wearing them.
Obviously, it has lower sensory resolution than a visual or audible interface, but it is going through a completely different channel. Over-eye or in-ear wearables have to compete for bandwidth in already cluttered channels. Tactile wearables have a wide open channel, just begging to be used.
Add in an interface for foot-gesture inputs, and you could do a lot more than just navigation and pedometry.
Wearables like Glass solve the problem of people having their faces glued to their phones by gluing their phones to their faces. And people use their faces for social interaction. So face-mounted tech is immediately noticeable and obvious, especially around eyes and ears. Hence, the nickname "glasshole".
Vibration is not new. I recall seeing video of a belt fitted with multiple vibration motors that always vibrated the motor closest to true north. This allowed blindfolded people to navigate across the test field to a predetermined destination.
This puts the same concept into the least noticeable spot on your body: the soles of your feet. Shoes are nearly impossible to forget when you go out, and we are already well conditioned to tolerate wearing them.
Obviously, it has lower sensory resolution than a visual or audible interface, but it is going through a completely different channel. Over-eye or in-ear wearables have to compete for bandwidth in already cluttered channels. Tactile wearables have a wide open channel, just begging to be used.
Add in an interface for foot-gesture inputs, and you could do a lot more than just navigation and pedometry.