Style & Usage
Pebble Time
TEXT BY KARENA GUPTON AKHAVEIN
“Winning a place on someone’s body is much harder than winning a place in someone’s purse,” says Pebble Head of Industrial
Design, Mark Solomon, describing the features that make
Pebble smart watches so deserving of a spot on that prime real
estate otherwise known as the wrist. Interestingly, the Founder
and CEO of Pebble, Eric Migicovsky, who came up with the
concept while studying abroad in the Netherlands in 2009, initially thought about creating a bike computer, not a watch. In
his then current location, he was experiencing a vexing issue:
he was spending a lot of time riding his bike, and could feel his
phone vibrating, but couldn’t safely reach it. The idea of a watch
eventually gained traction in his mind, because most people are
very familiar with wearing something on their wrist.
Back in the dark ages of 2009, however, wearable technology was in its infancy, and even today, most of the wearable
technology out there doesn’t look like something one would
wear outside of the gym, bike, or running trail, at least outside
of the microcosm known as Silicon Valley. Enter the first smart
watch that actually looks like, well, a watch. Sometimes it’s not
necessary to reinvent the wheel. “Watches have been around
for hundreds of years, if not more,” says Solomon, “so many
things have already been learned.” With Pebble, wearers can
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collect a variety of faces and straps, and swap them out. This
feature makes Pebble watches, and in particular the Pebble
Round watch, attractive to a more trend-driven demographic.
The Pebble Round was born when the Pebble team chatted with
women both within and out of the company about their needs. A
female designer was brought in to weigh in on colors, materials,
and finishes, and hundreds of prototypes were created before
settling on the slim-line current model, which could pass for a
fashion watch, but which is compatible with iPhone or Android,
and pairs with Misfit and Jawbone, to do most of the things our
phones can do, without actually having to fumble for the phone.
“With the Pebble,” says Solomon, we found that once users
put it on their wrist, they never want to take it off, because of the
experience and the usability.” These are the very features that
made Pebble’s Kickstarter campaign in 2012 the most successful
one of all time, raising 10 million dollars in under 30 days. Pebble
Time is not only the most funded campaign in Kickstarter’s history, eventually raising a total of over 20 million dollars, but it’s
also the fastest funded, raising $1 million in less than an hour.
Still, Pebble is a comparatively small company. Its team members refer to the story of David and Goliath, and point out how
they must prioritize when it comes to the features that will be