Link

M. T. Raghunath Wearable Computing Platforms, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
Chandra Narayanaswami Wearable Computing Platforms, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing archive
Volume 6 , Issue 1 (February 2002) table of contents
Pages: 17 - 30
Year of Publication: 2002
ISSN:1617-4909

Abstract:
Advances in technology have made it possible to package a reasonably powerful processor and memory subsystem coupled with an ultra high-resolution display and wireless communication into a wrist watch. This introduces a set of challenges in the nature of input devices, navigation, applications, and other areas. This paper describes a wearable computing platform in a wrist watch form-factor we have developed. We built two versions: one with a low resolution liquid crystal display; and another with a ultra high resolution organic light emitting diode display. In this paper we discuss the selection of the input devices and the design of applications and user interfaces for these two prototypes, and the compare the two versions.

My Discussion:
A bit misplaced in my ACM binder, since the wristwatches discussed do not have an electronic connection to the net or any other device. This papers is an exploration of one-handed user interfaces in a terribly constrained space, as put on two wrist watches, one with an almost standard LCD screen and one with a very high resolution screen. While I never expected to ever read the words "X11" and "wrist watch" in describing the same techonology, the strength of this paper is in the thoughts about the affordances of smart wrist watches and what position in daily life the UI will take. It is, two years later, certainly not in the actual UI, which comes accross as fairly unimaginative from their descriptions. It would be interesting to take this technology and strip out the computing power to just make it a wireless display to a personal server worn on the body, interfacing with other personal technology.