For those, like me, who are going gaga over their new Apple Watches, or awaiting delivery, it’s time to pause for a moment and prepare for what lies ahead. Remember the “Gartner Hype Cycle”? If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a pretty useful model worth reading about, and describes the five phases of the new technology life cycle:
- Technology Trigger: A new technology (such as wearables) see the light of day and people take notice.
- Peak of Inflated Expectation: Some stunning success stories, and scores of failures.
- Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes and implementations fail to deliver, often accompanied by negative media condemning the very concept.
- Slope of Enlightenment: A slow rise in usage, with second and third generation implementations that begin to reap real benefits.
- Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off.
While us Apple fanboys (confess) prefer to imagine the Apple Watch as the ultimate embodiment of the future and the grand implementation that finally wins people over…. think again. Right now, like it or not, we are at the very Mount Everest of inflated expectation. Get your parachute ready while I explain why.
It’s a Good Idea….
There is no question that having information on your wrist, available at a glance, is a good idea. Since Patek Phillipe invented the first wristwatch in 1898, they have become the standard in wearable tech for more than a century. Even the smartphone, handy as it is, did not eliminate the simplicity of a flick of the wrist, and wristwatches continue to sell.
Other wearables also are an obviously good idea. Fitness trackers make sense to a lot of people, and if you’ve used one, you can see the benefits even if, ultimately, you decide they may not be worth the bother for the narrow range of features they provide.
So, the watch, which combines timekeeping, fitness tracking, and other features, is a classic example of technology convergence. Convergence usually only happens once technologies mature to the point where basic needs (such as battery life), aesthetics, pricing and availability all reach a perfect storm and suddenly the convergent technology becomes practical and popular.
If you hear people ignoring this and claiming that the Apple Watch is a solution looking for a problem, they’re ignoring the fundamental needs above, and how easily they are solved by a convergent wearable.
One reason people are so stubborn about realizing this is that they severely underestimate their tolerance for inconvenience. People couldn’t see why you’d need a laptop because “going back to their desk” didn’t seem inconvenient. People couldn’t see why you’d need a smartphone because “going back to the laptop” didn’t not seem inconvenient.
But, time and time again, the effect of even simple improvements in convenience prove how sensitive we are when time and effort can be saved. We have things we’d rather be doing than seeking out our laptop, or perhaps checking our phones and messages constantly.
Recent reports (here, and here, among many others) suggest that the average person checks their phone between 120 and 150 times per day, and sometimes every six seconds during peak times.
A product which creates a more intimate connection to your digital interests, eliminating the need to constantly poll and handheld device, will ultimately be needed.
It’s a Good Product…
This just in: Apple has once more shown that virtually unlimited amounts of money and enough smart dedicated people and enough time can create a well-designed, quality product. If you haven’t seen the Apple Watch Reviews, I assume you must be on an Antarctic expedition.
It’s the best smartwatch yet, with beautiful hardware that’s both futuristic and fun. Sure there are cheaper alternatives that don’t require an iPhone, and it’s admittedly still a work in progress. But so far, the third-party app support is well ahead of expectations, and for once, actual users are giving glowing feedback rather than slamming reviewers as usual.
Yet, fanboys should settle down a bit. Only time will tell if Apple can iron out the kinks, and it’s anybody’s guess how the mass market will respond in the long run.
But Really, People Aren’t Yet Ready…
Just because it’s a good product, and begins to fill the need for convergence in wearables doesn’t mean the poles are shifting on their axes. Even respected magazines like Fortune are making wild predictions about the watch being “the proverbial tipping point for driving a new layer of services inside offices”. I don’t think so.
The thing people are missing is that consumers require time to adapt to new paradigms. Right now, people can’t imagine another way to check their mail except to check their phone. After using the Apple Watch for a week, it’s obvious that the basic metaphor has not yet changed. Notifications are more immediate, but the structure of the task itself, checking email, has not changed.
More than 20 years ago, in The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman shed tremendous light on why people adopt new technologies, and explained it in terms of seven stages of action: simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, mapping the visible to functions properly, limiting possibilities to avoid confusion, designing for error, and explaining opportunities clearly.
If you use the Apple Watch for a while, you can see clearly how very few of these stages have yet been addressed. The possibility is there, and the hardware and basic principal of the device is sound, but it is as if we are standing on the first step looking up at a long, long staircase that needs to be climbed.
So, The Trough of Disillusionment….
The Apple Watch is all potential. That is the good part. But there is an enormous gap between what the watch can do for people today compared to what the watch will do when enhancements and changes occur, coupled with the inevitably slow changes in consumer behavior.
Unfortunately, the hype has been so extreme, and Apple Fans have filled in the gaps, often assuming the entire market will make a leap of faith, just like us early adopters.
Well, it just won’t happen, and we’ll have to be patient.
Does that mean I don’t love my Apple Watch? No! Of course I do. Does that mean you shouldn’t buy one? Of course not. But, be aware that you’re buying a stepping stone to a way of interacting with the world that hasn’t quite happened yet, and Apple may not be the company to do it.