Purple, a concept wearable from Artefact, re-imagines the locket for the 21st Century. Compared to Apple's do-everything watch, it has one use-case: letting you keep up with pictures of the people you care about most. Artefact
Purple, a concept wearable from Artefact, re-imagines the locket for the 21st Century. Compared to Apple's do-everything watch, it has one use-case: letting you keep up with pictures of the people you care about most.
She settled on the locket because it’s a form factor with a long history. “We didn’t imagine some capability first, and optimize a form factor for it,” says Darmour. “Instead, we started with the form and tried to understand the value it brings.” Artefact
She settled on the locket because it’s a form factor with a long history. “We didn’t imagine some capability first, and optimize a form factor for it,” says Darmour. “Instead, we started with the form and tried to understand the value it brings.”
An early working prototype of the locket, which depended crucially on finding a circular LCD display. Artefact
An early working prototype of the locket, which depended crucially on finding a circular LCD display.
"This doesn’t replace Instagram,” says Jennifer Darmour, design director at Artefact and an early pioneer in wearable technology. “Rather, it creates a different kind of experience for it.” Artefact
"This doesn’t replace Instagram,” says Jennifer Darmour, design director at Artefact and an early pioneer in wearable technology. “Rather, it creates a different kind of experience for it.”
The equivalent of a notification---a little bit of light seeping out, indicating there's a new picture to look at. Artefact
The equivalent of a notification---a little bit of light seeping out, indicating there's a new picture to look at.
Some of the other finishes. Artefact
Some of the other finishes.
One thing quietly unsaid amid all the hubbub over the Apple Watch is that it’s not particularly clear what the device is for. Is it a notification screen? A fancy credit card? A health tracker? It’s all of those things–and that’s a problem, says Jennifer Darmour. “Even though Apple introduced a great platform, it still doesn’t know how to provide greater meaning,” says Darmour, a design director at Artefact and an early pioneer in wearable technology.
Her solution is Purple, a digital locket that keeps precious photos close at hand. The point, she says, is not to extend the number of people we’re connected to, but to winnow them. “It’s not about collecting 500 friends, but finding an experience that can enrich the core people you care about, no matter where they are.” Thus, Purple is meant to allow you to tag and save memories you’ll always want to be reminded of, rather than losing them in the torrent of your social feeds.
Clear Interactions
The locket tethers to your phone via Bluetooth; inside you’ll find a tiny circular screen for photos pulled from existing social networks like Instagram and Facebook, as well as SMS. You simply use the Purple app to designate a few close friends, and their social feeds are forwarded to the locket. That’s where the interaction design gets some subtle finesse.
Photos swipe on a “hinge.” Artefact
Typically, the locket’s screen is masked by a lid. That lid curves slightly upward, providing an easy way to open the device and a clever way of peeking inside. When a new photo arrives, the screen glows and light seeps out. Open it and you can see the photo. Tap it to save it to your permanent list of keepsakes, and scroll through others you might have saved.
As Darmour notes, the screen has only one additional gesture, which she calls “the peek.” When you see a photo, you can see who it’s from or see all the people you’re connected to. You can respond with a like or a quick preset message—or you can share it with others in your close network. (The locket in turn knows to share any messages or likes through the same service the message was sent from.)
The design accentuates the form factor. The screens seem to swing in arcs, from an invisible hinge, thus unifying the look and feel of the hardware and software. “This doesn’t replace Instagram,” says Darmour. “Rather, it creates a different kind of experience for it.” And why would anyone need a locket at all? As Darmour points out, our lives are more and more dispersed—we’re leaving our homes, going away to college, moving to new cities, traveling for work. This is not unlike the great age of industrialization that made lockets so popular in the late 1800′s.
A Different Design Approach: Problem First, Then Meaning
For years, Darmour has been a leading advocate for joining fashion with the burgeoning wearables movement. She was the founder of Electric Foxy—a start-up that created rings that delivered glowing message notifications and yoga clothes that could monitor your technique. With Purple, she’s eager to push another big idea: That the most charming interactions don’t spring from products that do everything, but instead from those sharply focused on one purpose.
The bent lip lets some light seep out when you have a new picture to look at. Artefact
Her design process for Purple started not with an idea for a gadget, but rather a recognition that social networks aren’t necessarily designed to keep us close to the people we care most about. She then set about studying the various objects in our lives that have served as keepsakes of those relationships. She settled on the locket because it’s a form factor with a long history. Yes, the locket is a tiny, purpose-built object created to keep a memory close. But it is also a symbol with centuries of cultural recognition behind it. “We didn’t imagine some capability first, and optimize a form factor for it,” says Darmour. “Instead, we started with the form and tried to understand the value it brings.”
To that end, she finds many of our contemporary approaches to joining fashion with technology fall short, from Tory Burch add-ons for Fitbit to Intel’s smartwatch collaboration with Opening Ceremony to, yes, the Apple Watch. As she notes, most companies still cram functionality into devices, in the hope that doing so will provide more selling points—and then add a fashionable gloss at the end, if at all. “No one yet is starting from the core of what you’re trying to solve, or defining the meaning you’re trying to create,” says Darmour.
The very first prototype of the locket that Darmour created, using whatever components she could find. The board and circuitry was eventually miniaturized to the size of a half dollar. Artefact
Purple is a working prototype, but it’s not yet a commercial product. Both Darmour and Artefact are seeking partners to build and distribute it. Of course, for a product like Purple to succeed, women will have to grok the need Darmour has recognized, and be willing to pay for it. This might be some time off—after all, Purple depends upon us being willing to focus less on our phones. It depends upon an era in which we view gadgets as being all around us, and intelligence dwelling in a wealth of devices of our choice. Only then will gadgets truly become a choice of self-expression, along the lines of a fashion object. But therein lies the difference: That era will be one in which the major gadget makers are less and less relevant, and the gadget industry at large isn’t exclusively focused on products designed for millions of users.
If the Apple Watch does succeed, its greatest impact may lie in inspiring people to buy a wealth of smaller, more finely tuned devices such as Purple.
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