FashionTech Innovation:
Smart Earrings: A hearable computer in your ear?
You’ve heard about wearables, but what about hearables? Hearables are wearable technology for your ears.
Voice interfaces like the Amazon Alexa and the Google Home have become a staple of many households. Advances in voice-activated technology have opened the doors for other types of voice devices. Why not take your voice device on the go with you outside the home?
Hearables function similar to other voice devices by understanding voice commands and speaking, or in this case whispering, back. Some hearables are paired with a mobile interface so that users don’t need to speak out loud in public.
Many hearables take the form of the earbuds and headphones we’re familiar with. However, some designers are taking a fashion forward approach. Peripherri hearables are designed to look like ordinary earrings. Notifications can be whispered into the wearer’s ear discreetly, with observers none the wiser.
While the Peripherri earrings are styled for women’s fashion, one can imagine how these could be designed for men.
As hearable technology becomes more fashion forward, we can hope to one day see a large selection of fashion forward voice devices.
About the Author: Chelsea Klukas has had a career working at the intersection of fashion and technology. She was the Creative Director for social shopping startup BeauCoo that aimed to solve problems of fit and sizing through technology. Later, she became the Product Design manager for projects including the Amazon Echo Look ai-enabled fashion assistant. She is the co-inventor of the Lumen Couture projection hat, her own wearable technology fashion line, and the Co-Founder of MakeFashion producing fashiontech runway shows around the world.
