CES 2015: Dawn of the DumbWatch

In many respects, 2014 was like 2009 for the tech industry. In 2009 we found ourselves bombarded with tablet concepts, 2014 pebble-dashed consumers with ill-conceived smartwatches.

Five years ago, all the talk was about Apple’s forthcoming tablet and CES 2010 was full of Android devices rushing to beat Apple to market. The iPad was officially revealed the week after the tech world left Vegas and launched the following April.

We didn’t witness an immediate stand-off between Apple and Android, the battle lines were drawn between the 80+ tablets revealed at CES, with a fight to the death.

So, here we are at the Consumer Electronics Show 2015, with wall-to-wall ‘Wearable Technology’ or ‘Wearables’ and the smartwatch is king. Or is it? Well, Apple isn’t here again. They’re not saving money, they just have a valid point to make – everyone’s talking about the the Apple Watch anyway.

I’ve been testing a selection of so-called smartwatches to destruction for the past 18 months and the conclusion is that they’re actually pretty dumb.

I’m not going to review each one in depth – I’ve done that enough either here or on the BBC but none of them tick all the boxes they should. They even have an issue with branding: From the cheekily named ‘i’m Watch’, to the ridiculous ‘LG G Watch R’ and ‘HP MB Chronowing’, to the rather more obvious ‘Sony Smartwatch’ and Will.i.am’s anti-watch, the ‘Puls’. It’s easy to see why Apple went with ‘Apple Watch’. Who knows if we’ll ever discover the truth about why they didn’t run with ‘iWatch’.

Here’s a quick personal checklist for each watch:

i’m Watch

+ Early to market brownie points – and the cheek of a name so close to ‘iWatch’

– Naive product and interactive design, it just doesn’t work (first two died within weeks) and wasn’t waterproof

Sony Smartwatch 2

+ Sony have been dabbling with smartwatches for years, there’s a Smartwatch 3 now, using generic Android Wear UI, but I don’t think the product design is as attractive as this steel model. Good battery life thanks to the low power screen with time-only sleep mode and single screen tap to illuminate. Waterproof

– The on-screen experience is a mess and feels old.

UPDATE: Smartwatch 3 Steel Edition tested at CES – a really nice looking quality watch that goes to the top of my Android Wear list. Also, a new range of strap and face combinations to launch next month.

Cogito Classic

+ Extra marks for making an attractive watch in a range if colours, with analogue hands and an illuminated circular screen. Breaks from the smartwatch mainstream and works with both Android and iOS smartphones

– My latest model has died, leaving working analogue hands but no screen. A new software update is expected to add connected home functionality.

UPDATE: A replacement watch is on the way but a stylish new model launched at CES looks interesting. More when I get my hands on one...

LG G Watch R

+ LG also have a smartwatch track record. This latest circular model improves on past attempts, with 2+ days battery life from an always-on time display. Measures biometric data (heart rate, steps taken + personal goals). Waterproof

– The overall product design is poor and feels cheap – especially when faced with the superior visual appeal of the Moto 360

HP Michael Bastian Chronowing

+ Finally, a smartwatch that genuinely focuses on quality design and materials, that works with Android AND iOS. The partnership between fashion designer Michael Bastian and tech giant HP should have been a perfect match. No, wait…

– …despite a beautiful presentation box holding three different straps (brown leather, olive mesh and black rubber) they are very difficult to change – unlike the fast-swap system on the Apple Watch, designed to improve the experience AND encourage additional strap purchase.

Also, the Chronowing is blighted by a poor on-screen user experience: No biometric data or motion detection, the text is too small, screen illumination requires a 3 second press and hold of one physical button, Bluetooth has a habit of disconnecting (although this has improved) and the magnet in my charging cradle isn't strong enough to stay attached to the watch. HP is on the case and a new charger is on its way to my hotel in Vegas, with better instructions for strap changing. I'll reserve final judgement.

UPDATE: The new re-designed charger has arrived. It now contains a stronger magnet and attaches without issue. Bluetooth is now stable and stays connected to my iPhone 6.

Will.i.am’s Puls Smart Cuff

It hasn’t arrived yet. I’ll tell you what it’s like to live with very soon…

A watch must deliver the time for at least 24 hours, look good, feel comfortable and not require compromise or extra effort. It must also offer information at-a-glance. These are the basics, like a book offering words or a film moving images and sound. Don’t attempt to enhance something if you can’t get the basics right. Which one am I wearing today? The Chronowing (despite all its faults) as it’s still a conversation starter.

Apple has a chance to tick boxes where others have failed, but they first need to convince an audience that abandoned watches for smartphones with clocks that they actually need one now.

In 2010 99% of iPad owners didn’t think they needed a tablet, but Steve Jobs made a compelling case and developers stepped up to create amazing content (including Brandwidth on day 1). The Apple Watch won’t be such an easy sell, Steve’s no longer around and success is measured on shifting more units than the last ‘big thing’.

Stop viewing smartwatches as standalone items and think of them as the small screen for the bigger screens and they have a future, just not the ones I’ve been wearing.

Rebel With a Cause

A rebel… every business needs one, from tech to finance, automotive to entertainment. Someone compelled to swim against the tide, or in reality, ahead of it.

To many, the idea of a disruptive influence in the midst of a well-oiled machine is the last thing they’d want to encourage. After all, there’s no ‘I’ in team, right? There is a big one in Impact and Instinct and two whoppers in Innovation.

Consider for a second some of the great disruptors, from Galileo and Socrates to Darwin and Jobs, we remember the plaudits and success but they faced their fair share of obstruction, ridicule and uncertainty. They stood their ground (often to their own detriment) but achieved greatness – not for themselves, but the advancement of mankind.

Their contribution to the world we live in was only given meaning through a willingness, a compulsion, to run before they could walk. They faced failure but learnt from this and channeled their energy into ever greater statements of intent.

The Apple ad from 1997 perfectly summed up this sentiment – “The ones who think they are crazy enough to change the world… are the ones who do”.

This spot was released to initiate the Think Different campaign in 1997. Here's to the reasons we stick with Apple through the ups and downs.

Now, I’m not claiming for a second that I have any right to share a platform with the greats mentioned above but I am a rebel and proud of it. 

My wife used to say the words to the Garth Brooks song ‘Standing Outside the Fire’ could have been written for me… “life is not tried, it is merely survived when you’re standing outside the fire”. It’s true, it’s hot in here, at times frickin’ uncomfortable and rarely involves sleep. It’s more rewarding than simply keeping your head down and merely getting on with it.

There is a careful balance to be achieved here. A business formed entirely of rebels is doomed to failure. My ‘Ultimate Agency’ post from 2010 is an example of a fantasy creative agency but imagine a top table featuring the likes of the late Steve Jobs and Wally Olins, to Stephen Fry, Mitch Joel, Marc Newson and Thomas Heatherwick. The Ultimate Agency would descend into anarchy without an army of ‘responsible adults’

My talk at TEDx Athens last weekend focused on the importance of balance. I spoke about the need for ‘seamless narrative’ and how without a clear understanding of this, you were unable to create ‘meaningful disruption’.

I gave the capacity audience their first taste of my rebellious disruption by equipping every delegate at the stunning Onassis Cultural Centre with our Brandwidth Innovation Lab app (iOS and Android) the audio-watermarked musical opening to my presentation triggered the digital performance, with each phone or tablet screen turning into an individual pixel to deliver a stunning light show – a 4D experience culminating with each handset vibrating as one for the final crescendo.

In the grand scheme of things, this was the equivalent to a digital firework display or waving lighters in the air at a concert. I still had a serious point to make. Communication on every level, on every device, no matter what kind of brand, business or individual needs to master the basic art of seamless narrative. Conversation and a clear personality needs a manageable change of pace. Merely shouting at an audience doesn’t work when everyone adopts the same volume or this just becomes white noise. Maintaining consistency is essential when adding impact to the meaningful messages.

My presentation is now available on Slideshare (although I had to convert this from Keynote to Power frickin’ point to upload) but please download for the full experience containing the embedded audio and video.

Disrupting Seamless Narrative from Dean Johnson

Here's the full TEDx video of my talk, complete with app-controlled 4D light show.

TEDx Athens was a wonderful experience, run by a passionate team lead by Dimitrios Kalavros-Gousiou and I was fortunate to catch some of the city sights thanks to Big Olive City Walks.

I wish I could have stayed longer but I’ve already flown from Athens to London, to San Francisco to Cupertino to LA in the past 48 hours, leaving disruption in my wake.

What a rebel.

A Tale of Two Brains

Never has Louis Armstrong’s song ‘We Have All The Time in The World’ been more poignant. I’m sorry, we simply don’t. The sad death of Robin Williams brings this into stark focus and highlights exactly how every second counts.

I have never held any religious beliefs and never will with my focus on achieving as much as possible in this life as we never know when the whole ride is going to end. We’re still in control (I’m sorry, I don’t believe in fate either) but it’s difficult to line everything up to fall perfectly into place.

Robin Williams battled with his own personal demons and his fight with depression ultimately lead to his decision to close the book on his life as he’d completed his final chapter. We feel cheated and we wanted another book, more of his comic and creative genius and feel sad about the personal tragedy and loss to us all.

I never met Robin Williams so I’m not lining up to add a personal story – just that he was always on my fantasy dinner party list and now I’ll have to leave that place empty. It was a big seat to fill.

He brought an extraordinary energy to all he pursued but those incredible highs were matched by shattering lows. As with many of the world's greatest entertainers, visionaries and creative individuals, depression and often a compulsive personality go hand in hand with the visible public results. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alexander McQueen, Ernest Hemmingway and many more have fought to maintain control. Thankfully the genius of Stephen Fry is still with us.

It’s a criminally unfair balance but one that exists for many nonetheless – but we only hear about the topflight personalities. All the more reason to be aware of those around us and take enough interest in loved ones and colleagues to notice changes in attitude and behaviour.

I’m writing this whilst sat in the gardens of the Kremlin in the centre of Moscow, having given a lecture in a stunning open air auditorium at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design last night. I spoke about incredible future opportunities for creative technology to change our lives (both good and bad) and some of the stunning projects we’re working on at Brandwidth to shape this.

Am I lucky? I’ve engineered that luck and I’ve pushed well beyond my comfort zone. There have been a few happy coincidences but they wouldn’t have happened without years of groundwork.

I used to be petrified of public speaking but I created situations where I’d have to ‘perform’ in front of an audience. As a fourteen year old, I attended a business seminar with my Dad (I was running the business – you all know I’m not normal) where I had to stand up, Introduce myself and explain why we were there. It may seem a small thing to do, but it was a massive step for me. Even though I’d been on TV the previous year, the live audience was an entirely new experience!

As if my regular radio, podcast, TV and conference appearances weren’t enough, I’m smashing more personal barriers at Silicon Beach in September by co-presenting with Apptain America (one of my many alter-egos), including a musical number and Oculus Rift light saber battle. What could possibly go wrong?

Speaking of comfort zones, I’m a pretty hopeless traveller as I’m geographically challenged, to the point of struggling with route-planning on UK roads and trains – even with satnav! But here I am, in Moscow, following speaking engagements and business trips to Poland, America and Dubai.

My active (with an e) right brain fights with my left on a daily basis but the right side’s always going to win. If I let the rational, sensible and ultimately safe side take control, I’d never push beyond my boundaries, take chances or leave my comfort zone.

Lisa Edwards wrote a great blog post last week on pushing boundaries, so it’s good to see more personal barriers being breached – although I’m not attempting Tough Mudder any time soon.

I'm raising a last vodka to Robin. Goodbye you wonderful man.

The Battle for the Dashboard

As the pace of technological innovation within the automotive sector continues to  increase, more and more of the analogue interior is becoming the new digital frontier. Apple hopes CarPlay will provide a common visual language to streamline the process.

Last week, the focus was all on Apple's WWDC keynote announcements in San Francisco. They delivered a wide range of software solutions, arming iOS developers with the next generation of digital tools and laying the groundwork for a raft of exciting hardware products in the run up to the holiday season.

Headlines were grabbed by enhanced Photos, audio Messages, smart Keyboards, Family Sharing, iCloud Drive, HealthKit, HomeKit and an entirely new programming language – Swift.

At WWDC 2013, Apple announced its intention to bring iOS to the car, on more than just your phone screen and earlier this year the first serious brand partners were revealed...

I have worked with the automotive industry for nearly 15 years and had much more than a passing interest in cars my whole life. However, I’ve never been a big fan of motoring classics unless influencing contemporary curves, so technological developments inside the car offer a fascinating design and development challenge. How do we bring the screen experience from our pockets to the the dashboard?

On the surface, this would seem a relatively simple step for Apple. iOS7 and iOS8 offer a flat graphic simplicity that lends itself to quick actions accessed at a glance, or effective voice commands for key features. Just the kind of interaction you want when 99% of your attention should be on the road ahead.

Apple’s hardware always follows a beautiful, streamlined aesthetic, free from unnecessary adornments and flourishes. Thanks to last year’s iOS7 overhaul, the software now compliments this perfectly.

The automotive market is a very different animal. Whilst brands may retain a level of consistency and share common components (ie VW Group or GM), they all assume different characters.

Consistency of digital brand: BMW UI from key to smartphone to smartwatch.

The BMW family screen UI is probably the best example of a diverse range, all reaching for the best on-screen graphics whilst adopting wildly different personalities. The MINI colour palette, iconography and graphics take on a cheeky, playful persona. Rolls Royce provides the polar opposite with layered glass-like panels to match the physical buttons surrounding the main screen. BMW’s conventional range uses a subtle colour palette to identify key functions (Audio, Sat Nav, Phone, etc) and gentle layering of content, with occasional light flares and reflective buttons. The new ‘i’ EV range range takes this a step further with a more adventurous palette and deeper layering for something that wouldn’t look out of place on the bridge of the USS Enterprise... but in a good way.

Graphic vs skeuomorphic, flat vs layered, corporate fonts, colour palettes and screen ratios. These are all graphic elements to take into consideration and there is undoubtedly a fine creative balancing act involved to combine existing branding and features with Apple’s CarPlay interface.

I’ve dwelt on the potential pitfalls but many automotive manufacturers are still offering drivers a pretty poor on-screen experience. Although the latest Land Rover Discovery Vision concept has a full set of screens displaying content that looks as if it could have emerged from Apple’s own creative studio, Tesla offers a comparatively poor graphic interface within the largest digital real estate on the market. The Model S UI is the perfect candidate for a full CarPlay-compatible makeover – especially as Tesla is a shoe-in for Apple acquisition and Elon Musk being Steve Jobs’ true successor-in-waiting.

I digress. Currently, CarPlay is only supporting 3rd party audio apps such as Beats (naturally) and Spotify music streaming services. Future app integration will build on this, with huge potential for voice commands and audio interaction. The focus will always remain on products that don’t distract the driver and offer the continuation of relevant services from phone to car. There’s little point offering everything in the car, in much the same way the compass app is pretty pointless on a smart TV.

Where CarPlay comes into its own is the familiarity through shared interfaces and content. The continuation of basic actions is essential, such as track syncing if started outside the car, then continued once driving. Also, the ability to share mapping data is genuinely useful (this wouldn't have been an option with Apple Maps 1.0). Navigate to a location in your car, then park and seamlessly continue on foot – that’s useful.

So what does the future hold for CarPlay? Apps are dead, right? No, this isn’t about using the internet in your car to replace apps.

Consider the following...

• Mapping data to provide info regarding payment services for parking, admission or valeting
• PassBook electronic tickets issued upon payment to display in-dash and on phone
• Biometric integration – Apple's Health app linked to wearable tech to monitor heart rate and consciousness levels for safety at the wheel
• HUD and gesture recognition – there’s a thought for future generations of iPhone interaction.

CarPlay offers automotive manufacturers the opportunity to streamline their UI and make consumers‘ lives simpler through familiarity. Apple has a chance to lock down another sector into the world of iOS. It’s not a bad place to be.

A version of this article originally appeared in iCreate issue 134