If a user of your product is buying a smartwatch tomorrow and your app is not compatible with it or your notifications can’t be triggered from there, you might frustrate them. If you have a website or an app today, it’s time to start planning support for wearable devices. In this article, we’ll review the platforms available today, what we can do on each of them, how to plan the architecture, and how to develop apps or companion services for these new devices.

Do you remember the shoe phone from Get Smart? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are probably too young (or I’m too old). (You can Google it now. Just go; I’ll wait here in this tab.) The shoe phone we saw on TV was followed by many other wearable devices on TV, such as the ones on Knight Rider, The Flintstones, James Bond and Dick Tracy. Many years later, we can say that wearable devices are here and ready to use. We, as designers and developers, need to be ready to develop successful experiences for them.

The post Getting Started With Wearables: How To Plan, Build And Design appeared first on Smashing Magazine.