The solve for this has been smartwatches designed specifically for women, to varying degrees of offense. Resizing is the first step: a thinner strap, a smaller face, more delicate styling (though, of course, not all women have tiny wrists, the same way that not all men have big wrists). Colorways come next, trading “masculine” black, gray, or brown for “feminine” white, tan, and now-ubiquitous rose gold (seriously, ever since Apple added rose gold to their lineup in September, every damn tech company has followed suit). The final step in making wearable tech for ladies? Throw some jewels on it. Sigh.
Technology companies and designing products for women don’t go well together, and never have – smartwatches and fitness trackers just highlight this problem like never before.
Why would anyone buy a watch requiring recharge each and every single day?
I guess you were wondering in 2007 why would anyone purchase a phone you need to charge every day? Some will never learn.
Weird, since I don’t use a smart-phone the Trac phone that I use instead was charged a month ago and still can be used today.
Worse, I am learning how to use Li-Ion batteries in my own projects and I am well aware that if people did not insist that on having the lightest design possible that people’s phone could work a lot longer.
Check out https://www.cobattery.com/ for an example of how much longer a phone could run without being too large to handle.
Nope, I didn’t, because the original iphone and the rest of the crew had (still has) actual functions.
Why would anyone buy a device which has the potential to be a security nightmare:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/smartwatches-can-be-used-to-spy-on-y…
I use the other hand for those things.
It might also work for keyboard typing, maybe you’ll only get half of the conversation though.
I guess smartphones that listen for commands are worse.
It was proven that listening to typing on a keyboard can reveal passwords too.
Well, basically every product that accepts input is basically insecure.
Does that mean every product that requires authentication is insecure ?
Because how do you do authentication without input ?
No, I mean any non trivial device that accepts input can be compromised. It just seems silly to harp on the apple watch for that vulnerability, when the computer you typed it from is far more insecure.
I mean take a look at these insecure corn shellers from the early 20th century.
https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/more-furniture-collectibles/more-a…
So simple, and yet so vulnerable to denial of service attacks.
Edited 2016-01-13 16:20 UTC
Well, yeah. Anything that’s 100% secure is 100% useless. A product that requires authentication, while insecure, is still more secure than one that doesn’t require authentication (provided they have the same features/uses).
As my corn sheller example kind of demonstrates, it depends on what you mean by secure, and useful.
There are many usecases for the apple watch that will never be vulnerable to that attack. Like if you use apple pay…
No one seems to mind smartphones, so that is not an issue that concerns many.
The even better question is why would you want a smartwatch when it often requires a phone that you are gonna have to carry around anyway?
I live near a college, one that is very Apple centric no less, and NOBODY over there seems to be wearing smartwatches and watching the kids for more than 5 seconds the reason why is obvious, they all have smartphones!
So I’m gonna have to say when it comes to this tech? I really don’t get who they are trying to market this to. All of the people I know who still wear watches (most of which are over 50 BTW) want a REAL watch with real movement which I can’t say i blame them as a well built watch is quite a lovely thing, and everybody else I know, the vast majority by a pretty good amount, don’t have any watches at all because they can just whip out their smartphone.
If there is anything interesting about this its the conversations I’ve had with many folks at the shop and just how quickly watches as a dress staple just died, I mean most folks do not even realize it until I ask them if they own a watch and when was the last time they wore a watch, most honestly cannot even remember the last time they wore a watch here. I know that when these first hit the news I had to think long and hard to remember the last time I had actually worn a watch myself and looking back? It was right before i got my first smartphone. I just quit seeing a point in wearing a watch when I’d have my phone out checking this or that anyway and talking to folks it appears for once I’m pretty mainstream when it comes to not using watches anymore.
Yeah, the real use cases as I see it are kind of niche:
1) On call duty: quickly look at pages and triage your response time. Really smart app devs, should really get on this with the apple phone to use that neat taptic api.
2) Parents of young children. Its much easier to glance at a wrist to determine the contents of a message, rather than put the (potentially screaming) child down to see if its an important email from the doctors with test results, or just an email from a store indicating your diaper order has been shipped.
I agree with the sibling on the limited use-cases, but want to add another:
Smartwatches have to be near your phone, but not phone-in-pocket close. If you leave your phone elsewhere (e.g. a purse) then having the watch for notifications makes it a lot less likely you’ll miss a message. Of course, this is niche because it requires a combination of (1) not wanting to have your phone in your pocket (or not wearing pockets) and (2) wanting to make sure you don’t miss a notification. In practice, the only people I know who use smartwatches for that purpose are socializing while on-call, which the sibling already mentioned.
Watch gestures could actually work well for feature phones, that is phones with small screens. It could revive that form factor.
Edited 2016-01-15 13:59 UTC
Time being an invention of the patriarchy and all…
So, women don’t like big watches… what about these honkin’ huge smartphones? Are they buying those?
I have no data, but yes, women do seem to like large smartphones. It makes sense – women often carry their phones in a bag of some kind, so why not carry a phablet?
As for fitness trackers, I do know plenty of women who have them (actually, in my local sample – college kids at college Zumba classes, and a largish local Karate Dojo – it’s mostly women who use them), so I’d be surprised if data suggests they don’t wear them. Maybe it’s just younger women who buy fitness trackers, vs mostly older men who buy smart watches (which also seems to be the case, subjectively).
Smart watches (other than the Apple watch) do tend to be too large.
It’s a lot easier to carry a giant phone in a bag rather than strapped to your wrist.
Or maybe tech. companies are drolling about the insane margins of luxury brands.
It is not about making something “neutral” appealing to everyone, it is about milking some customers.
Mens are similarly marketed with all sort of sports themed gadgets.
By ridiculing stereotypes, it glorifies the new mandatory neutral look, exemplified by Apple, rectangular metal and glass bricks, which is just another stereotype.
I hope there will be Swarowsky, skeumorphic, baroque, steampunk or vintage CASIO themed smartwatches, not just something that could perfectly fit in an IKEA ad.
Watches are (nothing more than) jewellery. If they were actually used for telling time we would all be wearing $10 digital models. [You’ll never see a real fighter pilot wearing a mechanical watch.]
Have a look at any advertisement for any major watch brand. The men’s models always have a lot of BS about heritage and technology. The women’s models are always sold on looks. This is despite the fact that men’s and women’s models often use identical movements. Here’s a nice pink ladies Casio G Shock http://www.shopcasio.com/product/g-shock-s-series-gmas110mp-4a2-pin…
Edited 2016-01-13 00:26 UTC
This piece is pretty dismissive of Swarovski crystal encrusted lady watches, but some tech products given a similarly politically incorrect treatment have been a big hit, at least in China.
For example, Casio’s TR series of selfie cameras for women have been very profitable, despite most low spec compact cameras losing much of their market to smartphones.
http://www.casio-intl.com/asia-mea/en/dc/ex_tr70/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VVvqw4ewjM
“The cameras have proved so popular in China that Casio has opened three stores that sell only TR series models. The stores are designed like make-up boutiques, to set the products apart from other cameras in the market. At up to Â¥100,000 (about $800) a pop these are not low-cost novelties priced for the mass market, so clearly Casio has been doing something very right indeed.”
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/2774239331/make-up-bracketing-and-…
Wow !
I’m stunned.
Why not, men have GoPros to show anyone who got the biggest.
Design is the most obvious starting point. It sucks to use gender to describe aesthetics in 2016, but the bulk of smartwatches still look traditionally “masculine.”
The solve for this has been smartwatches designed specifically for women, to varying degrees of offense.
Does anybody else see anything wrong with using masculine stereotypes to explain why women don’t buy smartwatches, then being offended when the manufacturers try to use feminine stereotypes to get women to buy them?
Hi,
Title should read: “Why Men Are Buying Smart Watches”.
My theory is it’s the ability to show potential gold diggers that you’re able to waste $$ on worthless crap, in order to trick them into thinking you’ve got more cash than brains (and that they might be able to scam some of your $$ themselves), and therefore make yourself more attractive to (a special subset of) the opposite sex. 😉
– Brendan
Yeah. I thought the answer to the headline seems pretty obvious: “Because most women are smarter than that”!
This article is a huge piece of bullshit. We all may know a few women who are techies and look for gadgets that appeal also to male techies, but the reality is the majority of women aren’t like that.
If a company wants to sell its gadgets to a small niche, they can sell gender neutral stuff, but if they want to go mainstream with women, they have to put those things: pink, gold, jewels and such.
Yep, that’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
She starts off complaining that current watches are large, unattractive, and designed for men – then when manufacturers start producing watches designed for women she complains about it because it’s gender specific. Maybe men don’t want her gender neutral watches – but who cares what men want it’s all about women. Full “social justice warrior” marks for dragging transgender models into the article, but male wrist size is something that isn’t altered in reassignemnt
Female journalists having a gender rant is such a tedious cliche, it’s always wilfully ignorant, entitled, self-regarding tosh.
Just create a variety of styles and let the market decide what is “masculine” and what is “feminine”.
The thing is, this is both a new technology and watches have been out of style for some time. Designs that appeal to women verses those that appeal to men will likely differ from the past. There may even be a few surprises for marketing departments, particularly if it turns out that the market wants gender neutral watches.
There is also a possibility that people will find gendered watches offensive. My last experience buying a watch was certainly a bad one because the saleswoman was distressed with me for buying a woman’s watch (as a man). The funny thing is that there was nothing “feminine” about the watch aside from a label on the box. Both the men and women in my life thought the thing looked good and were surprised when I told them about my purchasing experience.
Is a bad idea to create products by throwing everything at the wall and see what sticks. Good design for your products is done in a different way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design
A lot of women’s fashion watches are now 40mm or larger. That is the same size as a standard men’s diver. Back in the 1960s men’s dive watches were typically 36-38mm and men’s dress watches were around 32-34mm.
Edited 2016-01-14 23:48 UTC
I saw an Asus ZenWatch 2 on sale for 200 dollars. I have always been a smart watch skeptic, but for 200 dollars I wanted to try it out.
I love it!. Google Now makes a lot more sense when you can just look at your watch, it’s see easy to reply to quick texts and emails, and the battery life gets me through almost 2 days. I have to charge my phone more often.
I still have to find a valid use case for a smart watch. I must assume that most woman are smart enough to avoid an expensive toy that is dam ugly and that does not bring any value.
I’d rather spend $5000 on a nice Mont Blanc rather than $500 on a smartwatch, no contest. When it comes to smartwatches — don’t need one, don’t want one, wouldn’t buy or wear one.
Are women even buying normal watches? I thought that had pretty much gone out of style.
Some women hate it, others love it.
In just the same way some stuff is targeted for guys as being “blokey”.
It is a non-issue really and most of the people that will purchase it won’t give a damn about the supposed gender politics.
I have always had wrists like a skinny teenage girl. It has restricted my choice of wristwatches. Currently sporting a slender, easy maintenance Seiko.
I have no interest in owning a smartwatch. The attraction of a smartphone is that it replaced a number of discrete devices: mobile phone, PDA, music player and camera. Only one device to charge overnight.
Having to also charge a smartwatch would be a step backwards.