Wearable technology is everywhere. But how do you actually make it wearable?
By Ian Dull and Herkus Gudavičius
The announcement of the Apple Vision Pro has raised multiple eyebrows in the past weeks: there’s the awkwardness of heavy ‘ski goggles’ on human faces, the high price point, and questions over whether we need more devices to disconnect us from one another. Considering Apple’s skill in making us desire technology, it’s notable that the hemming and hawing is not about technical achievements, but a more fundamental question: Do I really want to wear this?
Part of that is, of course, a symptom of the state of AR and VR: before use cases take hold in the market, more than a few eyebrows will be raised by tens of billions in spending and a high price tag for unproven tech. But doubts about the Vision Pro tap into something deeper, into how we show up in the world.
New devices that transform our face, eyes, and ears are often met with anxiety. Vision Pro isn’t the first head wearable to be met with skepticism for similar reasons either: think of Google’s failed futuristic Glass, or Dyson’s apocalyptic ‘Zone’ air-pollution-fighting face vacuum-slash-headphones, or even Bose’s AR Frames, which combined AR audio with chunky sunglasses. When our bodies and faces become part of the equation, there are new standards of cultural sensitivity to meet. Whether it’s Apple, Meta, or someone else who succeeds with the next generation of wearables, success will come from understanding how to get our relationship to the body right. That means understanding culture, fashion, and adornment – how we communicate with our bodies, decorate them, and signal with them.
Designing for the body is not a blank canvas. Millenia of cultural expectations have conditioned how we see and use different parts of the body to show affection, perform agreement or disagreement, demonstrate our wealth, or signal gender. No space on the body is more important for that than the head. We take headshots to use as identification for official, professional, and informal purposes. We painstakingly consider hairstyles, extensively decorate with earrings, piercings, and necklaces, and carefully deconstruct styles and subtle expressions. We imbue our heads and our faces with tremendous symbolic value that designers and engineers are in danger of treading on.
The level of careful design needed is extreme. Each part of the head has a unique symbolic ‘topography’ to tap into or push up against – expectations we have for what people should be able to do or might wear. For example, the ears are broadly understood as the things that allow us to monitor the world around us — blocking them off is a clear sign to others that you’re opting to alienate yourself from the world. The eyes similarly are tools for intimacy and attention: putting something opaque in front of them – like the Vision Pro’s screen – obfuscates other peoples’ ability to confirm they have your attention; while the gesture of putting on reading glasses signals hyperfocus on a task at hand. It’s no wonder there’s been such strong reactions to the Vision Pro: when bulky ‘ski goggles’ take up most of the signaling space of your face, it’s not enough to see someone’s eyes on a screen or have earbud-free ears to know they’re paying attention. Sometimes it’s even more confusing.
Given how often we choose to adorn our faces and heads, there are a host of cues that wearables can tap into to avoid the ‘ick’ factor so many wearables have created in their intended audiences. Our research across fashion, luxury, and technology points to at least three strategies from fashion and adornment to help makers, in short, make wearables more wearable.
Lean into high-tech as fashion
There’s a new type of early adopter out there. In our studies of fashion and luxury consumers, we have frequently encountered young people whose style comes from watching videos of Steve Jobs, reading Wirecutter, and seeking out the hottest new gadgets. Their fashion ideal isn’t refinement or distinctive taste, but proximity to the tech world. Swapping Rolexes for Apple Watches may seem counter-intuitive, but the toned-down, beige, and minimalist aesthetic is much more than a fleeting trend – it’s a signal towards an aspirational path to success. What matters is being the first to own a scarce new product, prove success with a high-price purchase, and signal hyper-productivity.
In many ways, Vision Pro – with its classic Apple design cues, minimal aesthetic, and highly inaccessible price point – is already speaking to these Silicon Valley acolytes. Yet with a focus on the home and individual use cases to start, it’s a much harder device to signal out in the world. Our research suggests that the cutting-edge aura is more valuable to these consumers than the features themselves. When it comes to engineering tradeoffs, getting a flashy new device visible out in the world – perhaps with just one feature worth showing off – would be more important than a strong platform for home computing. If glasses must be home- or office-bound for now, how do they become a venerated decorative object in whatever space they’re shown off in? Think Fabergé eggs, not phones left around the table.
Soften the technology into an accessory
Italian theorist Leopoldina Fortunati argues that the mobile phone attempted to penetrate the world of fashion and accessories through three strategies, the most successful of which aimed to “transform it into a ‘soft machine’”: to clad them in soft leather or colorful covers, decorate them with stickers, and tuck them away into pants pockets or handbags. Smartphones, the theory goes, have become so pervasive precisely because they have become unobtrusive – camouflaged or concealed to better fit with how someone adorns themselves. It’s a strategy that Apple has already applied elsewhere: the Apple Watch became a success because it could be both technology and a watch; its interchangeable bands in varied colors, styles, and materials and collaborations with brands like Hermès and Gucci helped the Watch complement an outfit, not overtake it.
The challenge is greater, however, for the face and head. With thin, light, and powerful AR glasses or miniature audio wearables years away, how do bulky headsets or visible earbuds hide? Glasses and earrings, for one, have expanded dramatically in shape size and placement – from sculptural frames to ear ‘shells’ – offering a broader canvas to tap into. Beyond changeable straps or colors, could face and ear wearables push new directions for accessories for the head that give them more space to play or make bulky cool? Similarly, there are plenty of other accessories on the body for head wearables to disappear into: purses, shoulder bags, hats, helmets. Could wearables like the Vision Pro be designed to be quickly concealed, or integrated into a shoulder bag – like a vintage camera slung around your side as an accessory when not in use? It’s not just a question of good industrial design, but good fashion.
Enable transformation
Anthropologists have long studied the practices of using masks or other forms of facial adornment as ritual transformation. Most of us have at one point or another, adorned our faces with make-up or masks to temporarily embody someone else or an idea, even if just for a party. The power of covering and refashioning your face to become someone or something else is a key part of many cultural, literary and theatrical practices. It’s also the crux of the concern around head wearables: highly-visible hearing aids turn someone into an older, frailer version of themselves when they become visible; AR and VR headsets make users absent from ‘the real world’ by covering the face too much, albeit much less so than a mask.
The challenge for head wearables is then to tap into the right types of transformation at the right time. Meaningful transformations – whether literary, theatrical, or everyday – tap into new abilities, different beings, and sacred practices. While not sacred per se, there are many situations throughout everyday lives where transformation can be enhanced – from being deep in play with kids, to switching from boss to mother, to spooking friends or tapping into a favorite film universe. Rather than the image of a father kicking his son a soccer ball in a Vision Pro, what if the screen helped him play a knight or a dragon in a story? There are also longer-term transformations, who become when you wear something new – whether it’s a shaman in a mask, a drag queen, or an executive in a suit. What kinds of long-term transformation with something like Vision Pro help to signal? There are plenty of practices waiting to be transformed, if the mask is right.
Making the next generation of face and head wearables a success will always be a mystery if we primarily look to features for the solution. Yet there are plenty of novel approaches lying (literally) in plain sight: fashion, adornment, and cultural practices offer plenty of clues for adoption – if you know how to read them. The route to success isn’t in tech taking over the body, it lies in folding tech neatly into the world of symbols our bodies already wear.