Programming for Wearable—The Present and the Foreseeable Future

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The wearable technology ecosystem is still in a very early stage. The design and technological challenges of bringing technology closer and closer to our bodies is considerable. Here are some of the main challenges of what may one day soon be the main interfaces we use.

When it comes to adopting new technologies, the world has always been curious, hesitant to wait and then, ready to break into new trends. In less than a few decades, we have seen so much transition in technology migration and adoption that it boggles the mind how things are changing. First, cluttered and bulky PCs evolved into space-saving and lightweight desktop devices. As the trend gradually went on, we have seen the development of all-in-one Personal Computer, and then handheld devices including smartphones. Technology enthusiasts, and early adopters are quick to migrate to new devices, even with the expectations that not all will succeed in becoming widely used.

One unique and relatively new trend that is doing the rounds these days is wearable technology. When we refer to the term wearables, we mean to say smart watches, health tracking devices, and even the new age social technologies.

What is Programming for Wearable?

Developers and programmers are innovating newer ways to come up with improved mechanisms and output to develop wearable tech. When programming for wearable is mentioned, it refers to the innovation, ideas, and techniques used to make the devices better.

Challenges for Wearable Programmers:

• Tiny screens are not ideal for many applications 
• The audience interactivity feature is not fully functional 
• Adopting new apps in a seamless manner can be very difficult 
• Issuing notifications while actually giving users more ways to use the device is a challenge 
• Hardware fragmentation - which device/brand should development teams focus on for maximum results? 
• Battery life issues with small size constraints

At present, we have a good number of companies working around in developing effortless and easy to use wearables: Pebble, Apple, Sony and others are developing what they mean their version of the technology segment. Today no single company or wearable subset has emerged as the leading system.

Why Wearable Tech is Trying to be Adaptive?

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People have always been, as noted above, ready to try out new technologies. Wearable technology is still such a new paradigm though that the use cases and market segmentation are far from being fully developed. Although the wearable; particularly smart watch segment is scaling in popularity, but there are some reasons why the industry is still struggling to form a definite product space.

There are some vital reasons why wearable technology today is in this state. There is scarcity of cross platform development, a lack of helpful apps, and the inherent hardware technology issues of screen size, battery life, etc., are hurdles that need to be overcome.

What does the Future hold?

It would be wrong to say that wearable is at their peak of development. We are clearly in the infancy of this technology, and will see many more victims than successes in the coming years. Google Glass is one such early development that seemed to hold a lot of promise, but hasn’t lived up to the early hype. The jury is still out on Apple Watch.

The introduction of applications, development, and programming bits are falling into place though, and that the industry is well on its way. As more innovative measures are introduced and the community development is done, the industry will soon become to be popular. There are speculations that the industry will rise and a day will come when it will surpass all other contemporary devices, but for that we need to wait while enjoying the speed of development.

By Vaishnavi Agrawal

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About the Author: Vaishnavi Agrawal loves pursuing excellence through writing and have a passion for technology. She has successfully managed and run personal technology magazines and websites. She currently writes for Intellipaat , a global training company that provides e-learning and professional certification training.The courses offered by Intellipaat address the unique needs of working professionals. She is based out of Bangalore and has an experience of 5 years in the field of content writing and blogging. Her work has been published on various sites related to Hadoop, Big Data, Openstack Training, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, IT, SAP, Project Management and more.