How to turn smart devices upside down without destroying life?

The High-tech industry is obsessed with innovation, which is why the word "sabotage" can become popular. When it comes to wearable devices, the products that are being made are not only innovative, but can also naturally integrate into people's lives.

The key to the popularity of a High-tech product is whether it can strike a balance between function and design to improve people's lifestyles without requiring people to change their behavior.

I was fortunate enough to spend 17 years of my career at HP, and most of the time I was involved in PC and printer related businesses. At that time, we are creating new business, and take new ideas, with a spirit of adventure to open up the market.

I learned some basic rules at Hewlett Packard. These rules are very important to me after I joined the Livescribe company. Given the popularity and power of modern mobile devices, we quickly changed our product design ideas to embrace smartphones and tablets.

What is a "good design"? Good design means easy to use and means popular. A good design should make the product use natural, so that users do not need to view the manual.

Good design means that users do not have to learn product usage again, its working principle is simple and intuitive, can become the natural supplement of People's Daily life.

If a product is more focused on disruptive innovation than simple natural design, it can be problematic. ' To be successful, wearable devices need to be designed to be simple, natural, unobtrusive and let people forget their existence, ' Astro Teller of Google X Labs said in a recent interview with CNN.

"Technology failures are often not because they don't work, but because they require people to be aware of their existence." "When a technology can let people forget its existence, it achieves its ultimate goal: to be part of our daily work, and we don't have to give in to the new technology," he said. ”

When it comes to creating a high-tech product that changes people's work and lifestyles, it is easy for developers to fall into the technological innovation of Loneliness. But technological innovation is only half the success. There are a lot of great innovations in the industry that initially got a lot of attention, but they ended up failing.

Many of us have heard again and again that "hardware is hard". However, this difficulty is not because it is difficult to launch a new product in a saturated market. The biggest challenge in the hardware market is how to find the most effective balance between function and design. This balance determines whether a product is quickly off the shelf or is quickly boarded on ebay's shelves.

This is certainly a huge issue. But in my experience, I've learned a few things that help with the success of consumer electronics.

Simplifying design with new technology

When we first launched the Pulse Smart Pen in 2007, the iphone didn't exist. Pulse (and its successor, Echo and Sky) is designed to be a fully functional computing device with everything from display, microphone and speakers. We have also created a new user interface. In terms of product profile and user acceptance, our design is good, but there are limitations.

Later, when Bluetooth 4.0 low-power technology (BTLE) was widely used in iphone, we began to think about how to make the smart pen become a supporting product for mobile devices. Smartphones or tablets already have large displays, microphones, and speakers, so our smart pens can remove these hardware for simplicity.

In other words, what we want to do is to get users to just know how to use a smart pen and a mobile application without having to learn a new platform.

In recent years, wearable products are facing the challenge of how to allow the vast number of consumers to accept and long-term use. However, I believe that if companies can find the best balance between product functionality and attractive design, they will succeed.

Skeuomorph is still critical to wearable equipment

Skeuomorph design seems to have fallen out of favour. In IOS6, the contact application contacts looks like a spiral-bound address book. In iOS 7, the app's icon simplifies some, but you can still see the alphabet label on the main screen icon.

Although Skeuomorph is outdated in software design, I firmly believe that it is absolutely necessary for the design of smart devices, it can make technical transformation while keeping the user a kind of familiar feeling.

Mainstream consumers already have some concept of the use of products, if our equipment does not meet these expectations, it will be difficult for consumers to accept. We want to wear a watch for most of the day. We want our glasses to be folded easily, next to the pen in the pocket of the shirt.

Take our company's products as an example, we add a simple shirt pocket clip for the smart pen, balance the weight of each part of the pen, and draw inspiration from the color, feel and shape of the fountain pen. Our "smart pens" first have to be "dumb pen" and can write on paper with "ink".

Losing any of these attributes will reduce our chances of gaining market success because people have a common experience with the use of pens and people have very specific expectations.

Expanding the market with partners

In addition to making their own products simple and easy to use, I also found that a company needs to have partners to achieve success. You need partners to leverage their core competencies to enhance your capabilities, which will help make your product a new customer base.

Each of our new products are supported by partners, including Anoto, Evernote, Microsoft and Moleskine.

The next great technology product will change our way of life, but people are often unaware of them at first. What is the most important aspect of product design for you? What are the key factors that affect your purchase decision--function, style, or practicality?

Please let us know your thoughts and opinions. I look forward to seeing the "smart products" revolution bring us more and more practical products. And I hope they have excellent designs that can subvert and not disrupt people's lives. (Tan S)

The writer is Livescribe CEO Gillis Bogad (Gilles Bouchard)

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)