Mark Rolston used to be CCO at Frog Design. Now he runs his new consultancy, Argodesign. And as part of our Wearables Week, his firm generated a series of concepts based upon our simple mandate: No watches.

What Argodesign presented in response was “a provocation”–four wearable concepts that would not just track your heartbeat or put your email on your wrist, but give you what Rolston calls “superpowers.”

He points to the modern smartphone as his evidence. It’s already given us the opportunity to fly through space (through maps or video conferencing), travel through time (through our photos or social networks), and increase our intelligence (through omnipresent Internet access). To him, wearables will just be “more literal extensions” of these powers. They’ll offer us everything from more coordination to improved hearing. And it’s the quest for these powers that will drive user adoption.





We’ve all heard of kinesio tape. Kineseowear is basically kinesio tape come to life. It’s a stick-on, artificial muscle, that could do anything from tapping you on the left shoulder to convey the next turn dictated by your GPS, to supporting your muscles during an intense butterfly lap in the pool. It creates a physical bridge between your body and information of any sort.

“We had one [version] that was a belt that tightened before lunch so it keeps you from eating more than you want to,” Rolston explains. They settled on the athletic form as a cultural statement of its own–a way to signal to other runners or swimmers that you were of the same connected tribe.





Imagine if you could pick up a pencil and draw a perfect circle the first time you tried. That’s the promise of Oujiband, an electronic counterweight strapped to your wrist that uses a gyroscope and a gimbal to sense your fine motor movements and, when necessary, smooth them out a bit. (Imagine a finely balanced Segway for your hand.)