Floating Notifications: The OS of the Future

How's the Apple Watch doing? It's hard to say. What is its primary use case:

• Is it a tech gadget, a luxury item, or a combination of both?
• Is it only a complement to your iPhone?
• What does it do that's different than your iPhone?

Wearables are making us think differently about how we integrate technology onto our selves. We are integrating these devices into more areas of our lives than we could've imagined just a few years ago. Our moments are becoming cluttered with the continual stream of notifications emanating from objects that are constantly close to us and now on us.

Smartphones and tablets are easier to categorize and assign status in our lives than wearables. They are simply computers with small screens that are an extension of us, not a part of us. For humans, it's a very long journey from the palm of the hand to gadget on skin. Google Glass is the case study in how flummoxed humans become when considering gadget on skin. We've learned that when a person goes through the decision process to adopt a new "thing" and place it on their skin, it's never going to be only about what the "thing" does. More importantly, a person will ask themselves... does this "thing":

• delight me
• amuse me
• let me express myself
• heighten my (or my friend's) emotions

Watches are a more natural wearable than glasses. As we become more comfortable with the ever-present smart device on us, we'll more easily adopt other types, even under the skin at some point in the future.

As smart devices become smaller and more attached, what happens to the importance we've placed on our smartphone and its operating system? We've become used to our smartphone doing a lot, but their killer purpose is their ability to:

• be constantly aware of what's going on around us
• be able to notify us

Which makes me think that the idea of notification becomes our primary operating system, not iOS or Android. Currently, first-gen wearables treat notification as almost a democracy -- a constant flow without enough easy differentiation to bring us instant meaning. Apple achieved version 1.0 of notification as the OS on their Watch by using vibrations to differentiate. And, yes, you can set glances to give you just enough of some type of info at the snap of your wrist. 

As we begin to rely on different devices to notify us of important things happening in our lives, how will we be able to assign them their proper status or hierarchy? How do we assign them a place to notify us? How do we prioritize notifications from our boss, our kids, or the dry cleaner? Can we ask our devices to tap us three times on the wrist if we're getting a call from a VIP? Do we want to be tapped at all when Twitter thinks there's a tweet of specific interest?

What rules do you want your attached devices to adhere to when they want to notify you of something? Some notifications are essential, many less so. Now, these are manageable -- you install an app, you give it permission to notify you. But as sensors become more prevalent, smaller, on, inside other smart devices and even inside you, they become more difficult to manage. The trick will be for software creators to provide a way to manage notifications more holistically as they become more widespread in our lives. The Watch is paving the way for a future of unbridled assistance from our devices and sensors, but what's more important is to give us a way to manage the ongoing notifications that will assist us in all aspects of our lives. Notifications is truly the OS of the future.