Movewear Design: Changing habits one step at a time

“A product will never change behavior if nobody wants to use it.”?

• Stephen Wendell, behavior scientist

I recently wrote a primer on Movewear - an emerging category of powered consumer wearables to support mobility. It’s been exciting to see the range of design choices being made by early products hitting the market. Our movewear design philosophy at Skip is quite different from what we're seeing so far - which is things that generally look like various flavors of this…?

Designing for behavior change

At Skip, as we strive to support something as human and pervasive as movement, we think it's imperative for movewear to be deeply rooted in behavioral science principles - to have the best chance of fitting seamlessly into users’ busy lives and supporting them in changing their habits day by day.?

Behavior change is complex and tricky, but at its core it boils down to:?

• Triggers: What in people’s day-to-day will motivate them to start using the product?
• Actions: What behaviors does the product require of the user?
• Rewards: How fulfilling and useful is the product? Does it leave the user wanting more?
• Investments: What is the "work" done by the user each time they use the product that increases the benefit they can gain the next time?

So how do you design a movewear product around these core tenets of behavior change?

Let’s use Jamie - one of Skip’s early users - to demonstrate.

Trigger: piggy-back on existing behaviors

As movewear designers, it’s easy to assume that engaging in an activity they’d like support for will be what reminds people to use your product on a given day. But if you’re like Jamie, you’re not used to planning your days many hours in advance or carrying special gear around in case you might need it later - it’s why you find yourself caught in the rain without an umbrella or ride a bike share without a helmet. What you are used to is getting dressed in the morning before you leave the house. So how can we design around that much more foundational trigger of getting dressed instead?

At Skip, we’re taking the most familiar wardrobe items that people like Jamie have had decades to get used to putting on and designing our movewear experience inside. What would powered pants, powered socks, or powered shoes look like that she puts on in the morning instead of the ones already in her closet? How can you design them so she can throw them on in the morning and forget they’re there until she needs to call upon their movement superpowers? We think the most successful movewear products in the coming years will be those built to act as the core of people’s wardrobes rather than auxiliary add-ons that must be toted around and layered on top.

Action: make it simple AF

Whatever triggers you decide to design your movewear around, it’s imperative you minimize the work required of users when they pick it up on a given day. Movewear is intended to remove barriers to movement, so we need to be careful that we’re not replacing existing mobility barriers with new usability ones!?

At Skip, we take this really seriously. In a world where mobility products routinely come with lengthy setup processes and complex instruction manuals, two key standards we relentlessly measure our movewear against are:?

• Will it take Jamie as much time or less to put on our product than it would the unpowered alternative that she’s used to? We believe that just because someone needs a little extra support doesn’t mean they should be burdened with extra complexity to deal with or hoops to jump through.
• Once it’s on, are we doing everything we possibly can to minimize the time Jamie spends adjusting our product - both on her body and in the user interface. Jamie has ten knee braces sitting in her closet, having gotten annoyed at their bulk and the annoyance of constantly having to adjust them as she moved. Our goal is movewear that fades into the background - movewear that you forget is there once it’s on.

Reward: make it worthwhile every time

Movement needs are different for everyone, but they also vary greatly day to day. Successful movewear products will deliver more movement benefits than the effort required to use them on every single wear.

At Skip, we think this comes down to a few key design elements:

• Modularity to “right size” the movement support for what a given user is doing in any given moment. This might mean that Jamie can pop the powered elements off when she’s done with her long walk and is ready to grab a drink with a friend. Or it might mean making it easy for her to swap out the battery for a heavy-duty version to provide extra “juice” on a day she wants to tackle a long hike and her knees need the extra love.
• An outsized emphasis on having movewear that’s context aware. Does it understand Jamie’s movement needs in real-time and can it intelligently adapt to give her the right level of assistance in the moment? How can we thoughtfully design for the moments when we can’t get that level of context awareness by asking her what she needs in the least distracting way possible?
• Aesthetics as a leading requirement and not an after-thought. Like any wearable, movewear has a high bar to clear when it comes to looks because of the social signal it sends to the outside world. But remember, looking good doesn’t mean being hidden - it means being something Jamie is proud to show off to her friends. Assistive products have historically found themselves trapped at the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy, focusing their messaging on helping people with the very core need of moving around. But we can do so much better! Movewear can not only help Jamie move with less discomfort, but to help her feel more confident, connected, fulfilled…?

Investment: get better with every move

Movewear will be held to an exceedingly high standard given the personal nature of wearing something on-body for long periods of time and the trust this requires - and that’s a good thing. We have to make sure we don’t waste that trust.?

At Skip, we think it’s important that we not only deliver a good experience every time someone puts on our movewear but that this experience gets better with every subsequent wear. How can we help Jamie understand our product better with every use so she can build trust in it and use it more confidently next time? How can we most efficiently learn about her movement needs and preferences to deliver more relevant and useful support??

Movewear is just getting started as a product category, so there’s much to experiment with and learn. At Skip, we’re excited to bring users like Jamie into our design process and build our products on the backbone of behavior science - to maximize the impact we can have on movement in the coming years.

Stay tuned for Skip’s product launch this summer to learn more!?