MutewatchLike most things in life, wearable tech is largely the result of people not wanting to die, and it all began with the lowly wristwatch. Though status symbols in high society, pocket watches weren’t exactly practical on the battlefield. First seen as a hybrid pocketwatch known as a trench watch, wristwatches became an important development in war because they freed up hands, allowed for highly coordinated attacks, and made sure no one missed tea time.
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Fast forward a few centuries and we’re no longer using wearable tech to kill our enemies. We’re using it to kill calories and, heck, time itself.Following a similar trend, companies are taking the tech from our smartphones, tablets, and computers and making it hands-free. The Pebble Watch, a gadget that caught the smartwatch uptick early, is one of Kickstarter’s most successful campaigns to date and helped launch the smartwatch revolution.But not all watches of new are pocket-sized PC’s, nor do they promise a laundry list of functionalities. A growing type of watch takes some of our computerized lives most beloved (or hated) elements and turns them into impressive pieces of minimalist art―making time itself a new user interface.We take a look at some of the most creative examples below.The 4th Dimension In Pixel FormImage via Designers Maxim Mezentsev and Aleksander Suhih have taken hold of the pixel craze to develop a watch concept known as the Pixel Clock. This stripped-down version of timekeeping uses three virtual blocks to maintain the flow of seconds, minutes, and hours. The central pixel blinks for every second, the outer pixel rotates for minutes, and the middle one does the same to indicate a change of the hour. Time has never been so simple.Zoomable And Attention-Grabbing
Image via The internet can be a jungle of distraction and a timesuck made worse by dysfunctional design. The Zoomin watch, as designed by Gennady Martynov and Emre Cetinkoprulu, avoids both pitfalls through its zoomable interface. The Zoomin makes each passing hour an easily viewable experience—the magnifying hubs draw a user’s attention to the time at hand, making a distracting watch face a thing of the past.
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Making The Professional Playful
Image viaOne of the internet’s legacies is that it made the art of business a lot more relaxed and, in turn, more playful. The Ora Unica watch mirrors that cultural change as the rationality of time is turned into a doodle. Inner child-approved.Time As Add-On App
Image viaYiran Qian gives us the EOTS (Eye Of The Storm) watch. Without a face, the watch is all black until a wearer presses a button that lights up a minimal display. This design reflects the growing practice to treat time as an accessory or optional add-on to our computerized mechanisms.A Touch-Activated CanvasImage via Steve Jobs understood that consumers want functionality that is as beautiful as the shell that contains it. That is certainly at play with the touch-activated simplicity of the Mutewatch. Along with being outfitted with a USB port, which allows its software to change with the times, the Mutewatch is a beautiful canvas up to the point that the user decides it should function as a new age watch.Watch To Keep NSA From SnoopingImage viaThe Right Angle LCD watch wasn’t intended to thwart a surveillance-obsessed government—then again, we’re not tinfoil hat wearers—but it certainly speaks to the insecurities of a society where privacy is dying a quick death. The cryptic display can only be “cracked” when looked upon at a right angle and it also comes equipped with an upload functionality to store secret documents through a USB port.
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Tabbed Web Pages, Tabbed Tick TocksImage via Multi-tasking on the 'net ushered in the age of the tabbed browser. The Reveal Watch does something similar with time. Current hours and minutes are displayed at full-resolution while the peripheral ones are visually obstructed.Gravity Is The Ultimate Timesuck
Image viaWith the ability to be “plugged-in” 24/7, the average worker has seen his or her workload exceedingly bleed over into their non-work lives. The pull can feel akin to gravity. Jaemin Jaeminlee’s Gravitistic watch symbolically contains that new reality within its design philosophy as time is treated as a concentrated pull rather than as a typeface. The word “timesuck” just took on a whole new meaning.
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Image via The internet can be a jungle of distraction and a timesuck made worse by dysfunctional design. The Zoomin watch, as designed by Gennady Martynov and Emre Cetinkoprulu, avoids both pitfalls through its zoomable interface. The Zoomin makes each passing hour an easily viewable experience—the magnifying hubs draw a user’s attention to the time at hand, making a distracting watch face a thing of the past.Making The Professional Playful
Image viaOne of the internet’s legacies is that it made the art of business a lot more relaxed and, in turn, more playful. The Ora Unica watch mirrors that cultural change as the rationality of time is turned into a doodle. Inner child-approved.Time As Add-On App
Image viaWith the ability to be “plugged-in” 24/7, the average worker has seen his or her workload exceedingly bleed over into their non-work lives. The pull can feel akin to gravity. Jaemin Jaeminlee’s Gravitistic watch symbolically contains that new reality within its design philosophy as time is treated as a concentrated pull rather than as a typeface. The word “timesuck” just took on a whole new meaning.