This HUD For Doctors Proves Less Is More For Future Wearables

For all of its promising ideas and potential, Google Glass can, at best, be summed up as a noble failure. In trying to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible, the resulting device offered little in the way of real world utility. But there were lessons to be learned, and those paying attention are iterating.

This was the starting point for the experience design firm Method when it set out to design the Vivi headset. Working with Bay Innovation, a startup launched by two anesthetists, the wearable is designed to instantly deliver info such as vitals to doctors as they operate. Method understood it couldn’t just shoehorn its functionality into a product built for general use, but rather had to build the product around the existing habits of its intended users.

“Showing them just the core data that they need to see and notifying them if something that has changed—if nothing’s changed that’s OK,” explains Method CTO David Rajan. “But if the blood pressure’s dropped, you need to know that and you need to know quickly. What the device does is tell you that you need to look at the monitor now. Something’s happening…go intervene. Which is different than just putting a big screen in front of someone.”