User Experience Design for Wearables

Your Wardrobe Goes Online From step counters to fart monitors, wearables are changing the epistemology of medicine itself We began with step counters. Then heart rhythms. Then sleep cycles. Then blood oxygen. Then glucose. Now? Farts. Scientists at the University of Maryland are piloting what they jokingly call a "Fitbit for farts"—a tiny hydrogen sensor worn discreetly on the body that continuously measures flatulence. It sounds like late-night comedy. It is, in fact, serious #gastroenterology. And it signals something much larger. This device sits at the crossroads of three powerful trends: extreme miniaturization, continuous monitoring, and edge computing. The same supply chains that gave us smart rings, smart watches, and wireless earbuds now enable a battery-powered sensor small enough to measure something we've never systematically measured before: baseline digestive patterns. Forty percent of American adults report regular digestive disruption. Fiber-rich diets, which reduce colon cancer risk, are often abandoned because of bloating and gas. Yet in 2026, we still don't know how often the average person passes gas in a day. Early data offers a hint at the range: one participant logged 175 emissions. For decades, digestive health relied on self-reporting and invasive lab work. Now we are entering an era of passive, ambient #health telemetry. The #AppleWatch moved the cardiology ward to your wrist. Continuous glucose monitors brought the endocrinology lab to your arm. Each time, the shift was the same: from episodic snapshot to living dashboard. When you move from occasional measurement to continuous signal detection, you don't just gather more data—you change the epistemology of medicine itself. Patterns that were previously invisible become legible. Causation, not just correlation, becomes possible. This is just the beginning. Imagine clothing that tracks inflammatory markers. Glasses that monitor neurological drift. Belts—we make a few of those at Randa Apparel & Accessories—that detect posture, waist measurement, and metabolic change. Fabrics embedded with biosensors that surface early-stage disease before symptoms arrive. Your wardrobe becomes diagnostic infrastructure. Real questions follow: #data ownership, #privacy, psychological burden, the quiet anxiety of living with a dashboard of yourself. Continuous monitoring can empower patients, or produce a nation of worried well, over-interpreting every signal. These are not small concerns. But the direction is unmistakable. #Healthcare is migrating from hospitals to homes to bodies. From appointments to algorithms. From episodic to continuous. Technology has always moved closer, first to our pockets with smartphones, then our wrists. Now it is woven into the textiles we wear and clipped discreetly where biology actually happens. Fitbit (now part of Google) and ŌURA are not the destination. They are the prologue. Walt Whitman sang the body electric. We're adding sensors.

When we talk about wearables, the focus is usually on what they let us do, such as track steps, translate a conversation, or enter a virtual world. Those use cases drive adoption, but there is another side to wearing technology that is just as valuable. It is not about action, but about collection. Wearables listen, sense, and record while on our bodies, creating a layer of context that can enhance every application by adding more of us into the mix. Earbuds now track heart rate, movement, and location alongside audio. Smartglasses can see what is in front of you while knowing where you are and who you are with. By capturing this information, wearables become engines of metadata that describe not only you but also the moment you are in. This data has the power to reshape the apps we already use. Social platforms could personalize feeds based on mood. Music services could adjust playlists to match your heart rate. Maps could plan routes that respond to your pace and energy. It will also enable entirely new app categories built on context we have never had before. Today, our devices treat us mostly as isolated users tapping on screens. Wearables are giving them new ways to understand us as people in context. This extra layer of awareness will unlock a wave of hyper-personalization unlike anything we have seen before. #wearabletech #wearables #contextualcomputing #smartglasses #spatialcomputing

The most important wearable of the next decade won’t be something you show. It won’t sit on your wrist. It won’t light up. You may even forget it’s there. Health technology is shifting from devices we notice to systems that quietly work in the background. Lumia™ Health is a strong signal of that shift. They didn’t choose the wrist. They chose the ear. They didn’t optimize battery life. They removed charging altogether. A solar-powered earable, under one gram, always on, fueled by ambient light as life unfolds. No habits to build. No charging reminders. No data gaps because the device died. But the real innovation isn’t convenience. It’s what becomes measurable. The wrist captures movement. Steps. Heart rate. Activity trends. The ear opens access to cephalic blood flow and that’s how blood reaches the brain in real time. That matters for symptoms people experience daily: brain fog, dizziness, fatigue, head pressure. Not acute illness. Not “nothing” either. These signals live between annual checkups and lived experience that quietly shaping focus, energy, and performance. With continuous sensing, context appears: during work, under stress, in recovery. Health stops being episodic. It becomes adaptive. Instead of reviewing data after the fact, the system responds as conditions change by detecting early shifts, linking them to behavior and environment, and guiding action before symptoms escalate. This is the next phase of wearables: less attention, more intelligence. From a health futurist’s lens, three forces are converging: • Invisible design over visible tech • Deep physiology over surface metrics • Continuous guidance over periodic insight Lumia™ Health sits right at that intersection. We’re moving beyond the wrist. Beyond dashboards. Beyond once-a-year health. Toward silent, solar, brain-aware systems that work with us, not on us. #wearabletech #thewearablesexpert How do you see earables and invisible wearables redefining health products?

I started the year at CES after multiple trips to China last year, trying to understand where #wearables are heading. All I can really say is that it’s moving faster than anyone can map it cleanly. What I saw: the lines between #health and #performance, passive and interactive, are blurring at record speed. Samsung Electronics's Galaxy Ring tracks recovery like WHOOP but is sold as a lifestyle device. Xiaomi Technology's latest bands cost under $40 and deliver SpO2! Garmin's sport watches now include stress monitoring and sleep coaching. The old framework of "health versus performance" no longer holds. Global wearables reached US$61.3 billion in 2024, projected to hit $118.2 billion by 2032 (Straits Research, 2025). Apple leads with 23.8% share, Xiaomi Technology 11.8%, Samsung Electronics & Huawei at ~8% (IDC, Q4 2024). But market share data alone does not explain how consumers are using these devices or where the category is moving. At Seveno Capital, we built this map to untangle the web. Two axes cut through the noise: Interaction model: Passive continuous monitoring versus interactive on-demand engagement. Use case focus: Health and #longevity versus #performance and training. Four clusters emerge, but the boundaries are softening: 1️⃣ #HolisticHealth: WHOOP, ŌURA, Ultrahuman smart rings focused on passive biometric monitoring. 2️⃣ #Lifestyle Monitoring: Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch, Google Pixel Watch blending health features with daily lifestyle utility using rich displays. 3️⃣ Advanced #Performance: Garmin Fenix, COROS, Suunto, POLAR serving serious athletes with training tools and maps. 4️⃣ Essential #Tracking: Fitbit (now part of Google) Charge, Xiaomi Band, HONOR Band offering core metrics without smartwatch complexity. The reality: devices are migrating across quadrants faster than maps can capture. What started as a #sleep ring now tracks workouts. What launched as a running watch now monitors AFib. The category is converging. But the bigger tension is in business models. Customers are pushing back on #subscriptions. WHOOP, Oura, and others built entire ecosystems on recurring revenue. Meanwhile, Garmin, Ultrahuman, and most Chinese brands offer full functionality without monthly fees. The market is splitting: subscription-dependent platforms versus one-time purchase models. This will reshape the ecosystem. Companies locked into subscription models face retention pressure as feature parity narrows. Devices that deliver value without recurring fees are gaining share, especially in Asia where subscription fatigue set in early. This map reflects where devices sit today. By next year, half of them will have moved. Where do you see the biggest positioning gaps in wearables? NOTE: Map is purely indicative and not meant to be exhaustive. Includes major models across smartwatches, bands and rings. Feel free to contribute in comments what we missed Seveno Capital

⏳ Looking back 20 years, here’s some advice I wish someone had given me when I started grad school designing wearable and assistive technologies: Designing wearable tech isn’t just about biomechanics—it’s about comfort. Too often, as scientists and engineers, we overly focus on performance metrics, technical specs, or biomechanical outcomes while overlooking the human experience of wearing a device. Or we simply value novelty, gadgetry, and complexity over practicality, elegance, and usability of solutions. 🎯 But comfort is key. And it's multi-dimensional, especially for technologies like #exoskeletons. If you want to design wearable tech with end users truly in mind, consider: • Physical comfort: fit, weight, pressure distribution • Thermal comfort: heat buildup and sweat retention • Psychosocial comfort: aesthetics, noise, user perception ☝🏽 And don’t forget comfort-adjacent factors that also impact real-world adoption. Things like: • Freedom of movement: bulk and mechanical interference • Ease of use: practicality and cognitive load These are all microcosms of a bigger challenge in wearable technology: balancing engineering performance with the user experience. It’s something I wish I had been much more in touch with early in my academic research career—and something I’m grateful has become an integral part of our R&D over the past decade. 👉🏽 If you work in wearable tech, assistive robotics, or human-centered design—what forms of “comfort” do you think engineers and designers most often overlook?

🏥 Two #wearable companies. Combined valuation: over $20 billion. And we're just getting started. WHOOP has just raised $575 million in a Series G round at a $10.1 billion valuation. What is especially notable is not only the size of the round, but the signal behind it: investors include Abbott and Mayo Clinic. That suggests wearables are increasingly being seen not merely as consumer wellness products, but as strategically relevant assets in the future of healthcare. Meanwhile, ŌURA has been reported at roughly an $11 billion valuation, reinforcing the scale of market confidence in continuous, consumer-facing health monitoring. What makes this shift important is not just the hardware. It is the growing clinical relevance of continuous, real-world data. Recent literature shows that wearable technologies are moving beyond lifestyle tracking into more serious remote monitoring use cases. A new Nature Portfolio study demonstrated that #smartwatch-based monitoring can support the remote assessment of heart failure patients using continuous physiologic and behavioral data. A JMIR mHealth and uHealth systematic review further showed that wearables are increasingly used for chronic disease monitoring, especially in cardiovascular and neurological applications. At the same time, the real acceleration comes from analytics. As #AI-enabled interpretation improves, wearable data is becoming more actionable: not just raw signals, but contextualized information about recovery, stress, rhythm, activity, and deterioration risk. A JMIR systematic review on AI-enabled medical devices highlights wearable monitoring as one of the domains where AI is enabling more continuous, #personalized health management. This is why wearables are becoming strategically relevant beyond consumer tech. They are helping to push healthcare away from a model that mainly reacts to illness, and toward one that increasingly supports prevention, early detection, and continuous management. A recent European Heart Journal – Digital Health review describes wearable technologies as part of a transformation in cardiovascular care through continuous monitoring outside traditional clinical settings, while also making clear that large-scale impact still depends on validation, workflow integration, and governance. For those of us working in healthcare IT, the key question is no longer whether wearable-generated data will matter. The real question is: Are our health IT systems ready to receive, contextualize, and operationalize this data? #DigitalHealth #Wearables #RemotePatientMonitoring #PreventiveCare #AIinHealthcare #HealthcareIT #Interoperability #DigitalTransformation #Virgobit

The form factor "IntenDesign" of a tag is not just a detail; it is the essence of the project. In the realm of Real Time Location Systems (RTLS), we often told ourselves, “a tag is a tag; we’ll adapt it to the use case.” We believed this until we learned the hard way that it simply doesn’t work. When processes are already defined such as in #hospitals, #industry, and #safety a tag cannot merely adapt; it must belong. This goes beyond shape; it’s about embedding intention into design. A tag is not neutral; it embodies behavior. If it doesn’t naturally suggest the right action, you are not providing a solution; you are introducing friction. Consider real examples: in emergencies, people act on instinct. If they have to search for a tiny button, the moment is lost. #Infrafon badges succeed because of their affordance: you see it, you know it, you touch it, and it happens. For patient tracking, a wristband must align with what hospitals currently use; otherwise, it risks remaining a point of care (POC) forever. Labels, whether printable BLE labels or dynamic labels that change with context, are crucial for adoption. Moreover, the choice of tag often drives the technology selection. It is not a minor component; it significantly impacts total cost of ownership (TCO), including maintenance efforts, battery life, replacements, breakage, and recurring costs year after year. This is why #BlueGPS remains technology-agnostic and continuously expands the available form factors. The success of RTLS ultimately hinges on the objects people use daily without a second thought. Introducing a new concept: IntenDesign where design does not merely encompass technology but contains the intention of the gesture. #RTLS #BlueGPS #IndoorPositioning #IoT #DigitalTransformation #HealthcareInnovation #HospitalSafety #AssetTracking #Wearables #UXDesign #ProductDesign

My prediction for the consumer wearables market by 2030 is that we will see a user-side consolidation led by a central data analytics provider. Here's why: Currently, the wearable tech market is dominated by vertically integrated companies who develop their own hardware, firmware, and companion software, leading to data silos and disjointed user experience. This structure limits the potential for cross-platform data integration and "whole-person" analysis, both across functions (i.e. performance, workload / fatigue, health) and across use cases (i.e. general fitness, sports, workplace activities). In 2023, over half of Gen Z and Millennial consumers expressed interest in wearable smart accessory networks that offer a unified view of their wellness. This is interesting for two reasons: a) each user will potentially adopt multiple wearables and b) consumers expect a consolidated experience, which today's infrastructure doesn't fully enabled. Currently, a user who wants the best insights on sleep, general fitness, and ski performance, for example, would be left to juggle multiple devices like ŌURA, WHOOP, and Carv, each for a distinct purpose. This scenario involves managing multiple hardware systems, subscriptions, and companion apps, where the onus to triangulate insights is left to the user. The lack of interoperability among different systems exacerbates the issue. While companies are attempting to provide unified health APIs, these solutions still require third-party developers to resolve inconsistencies or overlap from data sources and create meaningful insights for users. This approach does not fundamentally improve the user experience beyond perhaps an integrated software. I foresee a significant shift from the current model to a two-sided ecosystem approach with a unified data analytics provider as the consolidation point. Such a provider would unify data from various wearable (hardware) technologies and allow third-party development on top of an insights engine rather than data streams. The evolution towards this more integrated and user-centric ecosystem in the wearables market could be the key to unlocking the full potential of this technology, creating a seamless and intuitive experience that puts holistic health front and center. An exciting decade ahead for wearable tech...🚀

Another signal the future of wearables is moving beyond the wrist: smart-earring startup Lumia just raised $7M from J2 Ventures and BonAngels. Lumia is building smart earrings that measure blood flow to the head, a vastly cleaner physiological signal than the wrist. The ear has stronger arterial flow, less motion noise, and better temperature stability, meaning more accurate HR, HRV, oxygenation and even cognitive-stress markers. Why this matters: 1. The wearable stack is shifting to new form factors. Oura and Ultrahuman proved rings could beat watches on sleep + recovery. WHOOP proved straps could beat watches on continuous data. Now we’re seeing a wave of ear-based wearables aimed at cognitive and emotional biomarkers. 2. “Brain-adjacent biometrics” may be the next frontier. Better data → better insights on stress, focus, burnout, emotional volatility, and early neuro indicators. 3. Strong funding despite a crowded wearable category. Lumia’s $7M round adds to a big year in non-wrist wearables: Oura $350M+ WHOOP $400M+ Movano Evie $60M+ Ultrahuman $35M+ Earable $6M The thesis is clear: We’re heading toward form-factor-specific wearables rather than “one device fits all.” Sleep ring, fitness strap, glucose patch, cognitive earring, all feeding personalized health models.

Wearable tech has come a long way — incredible sensors, sleek designs, and mountains of data 👇🏻 However there’s a major gap that often goes unseen: we’re collecting the data without enough understanding of the environment people live in, and their social determinants of health 👏🏻We’ve noticed: •Someone’s physical activity, sleep, glucose, etc., isn’t just about what happens on the body, but the world around them — the air quality, noise, light, access to safe spaces •Social determinants like income, education, neighborhood, health literacy, digital access, and culture shape not only baseline health, but also whether wearable data is meaningful, actionable, or even useful 🍏We’ve researched: 1. Health equity & deployment in vulnerable populations A recent article in Nature Communications argues that medical wearables have huge potential to promote health equity at scale — IF they are designed/validated/deployed with vulnerable populations and environmental factors in mind 2. Wearables improve health in older adults — but mediated by behaviors & living conditions A study using data from the China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS) found that older people using wearables had better physical health. But the benefits were stronger among those who lived with children or had fewer chronic conditions — this hints that social context and living arrangement matter 3. Digital health literacy & sociodemographic barriers In Germany, a survey showed that wearable users are disproportionately younger, more educated, higher income, living in larger cities. Lower income, lower education, older age groups had much lower adoption. Digital health literacy played a mediating role between age and wearable use 4. Environmental context is under-studied but appears important One article “Digital Phenotyping” argues that physiological data needs to be anchored in environmental context (air, noise, light) to really understand behaviors and health outcomes Another looked at wearable data in extreme weather events and climate change — showing that environment influences how health shows up in the data 💛What needs to change and what RenewRx is doing as a company: •Design wearable systems that capture environmental/contextual inputs (air quality, noise, climate, safety of neighborhood) and social-determinant metadata (e.g. housing, income, digital access, an individual’s current beliefs on health and change) •Make analytics interpret data in context so suggestions are feasible. For example, telling someone to “go for a walk” isn’t helpful if there’s no safe sidewalk or the weather is extreme •Focus on equitable adoption: improve digital health literacy, reduce cost barriers, make interfaces culturally relevant •Research should study not just “what wearables can measure,” but “what the data means for people living in different environments,” and how to tailor insights accordingly.