Moment, a haptic feedback wrist-worn wearable, wants you to spend less time with your devices, more time with your feelings… kinda like the Apple Watch, but without all that pesky display technology.
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The Moment wearable crams an advanced form of notification wearable technology. It’s reminiscent of what we’ve seen in some of the wearable rings and lifestyle wearables.
The feelings we’re talking about are not your emotions, like the ones Zenta measures, but sensory feelings delivered to your wrist from advanced haptic feedback. It sounds complicated, but Moment is quite simple.
Since there is no screen to look at, Moment will keep your eyes up, using only haptic vibrations to cue you.
What’s even worse is, we’re pretty sure our gut reaction goes against everything the founders are about…
Advanced Haptics
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You know those vibrations from your smartphone that let you know different information? You could call that a simple form of haptic feedback.
A better example is the vibrations from certain touch devices, like trackpads or more advanced smartphones. It’s that feeling in your fingertip like you’ve just depressed an old-timey button, but it was only the glass on your screen.
Haptics can fool your sense of touch into thinking something other than a vibration has taken place.
Moment uses four points, with four separate motors and patterning to individualize each notification.
As the CEO explains in their product video, Moment draws shapes on your wrist that you make out just by feeling them. In other words, you don’t have to look down to receive a message from Moment.
Cues
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Moment will give you turn by turn GPS direction, drawing the shapes of left or right turn indications on your wrist. They call it tactile navigation.
Custom caller ID will do just what you think. The difference between these custom vibrations and your phones’ is, Moment will customize the vibrations for you.
It will also notify you if you’re being unproductive, help you maintain a beat, and wake you up in the morning. It will even track your stocks for you. Just don’t ask Moment to quote you the gains or losses.
The plug from the Moment team is that these cues, over time, grow intuitive. You know things are happening without those “things” pulling your full attention.
Stylish?
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Imagine your Apple Watch, but with a piece of plastic over the face, one you can’t remove. The only feature is a hole in the center. It’s otherwise about the same size.
This is gonna be a tough hurdle for Moment to overcome. A wrist-worn device that looks like a smartwatch, but doesn’t do anything a watch does (things like… oh, I dunno, tell time?) might seem silly unless you plan to wear long sleeves.
There will always be folks who are more about the function of a device than they are the fashion. They’re called early adopters.
Apple didn’t rise to the position of #2 watch-maker in two years by making something abject of style. Style was the first foot they put forward.
Worth it?
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The question begging to be asked, is do we need this?
If you want to wear any kind of watch, Moment has to go on your other wrist. The first thing we thought when we saw this was, why can’t someone like Apple just buy this technology to put in the Watch 3?
While that seems unlikely, as it doesn’t align with Moment’s goals, it does seem more likely that a company such as Apple would take the big cues from this device.
They will likely incorporate advanced haptic feedback into future wearables.
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If you just hate the idea of a watch, but love wearing devices on your wrist, then go fund Moment.
The final device may not look exactly like the prototypes, but we imagine it will be pretty close. It will look like a watch.
Plan to field questions from strangers about the time of day. You may spend more time explaining why your watch can’t tell time than you want.
“It’s now, man. It’s this moment.”