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Comment by misterbowfinger | Hacker News Reader

One way to look at wearable tech is as an extension of the surface of your smartphone. If you can interact with your phone throughout your clothing, there could be a lot of room for (warning, buzzword!) innovation there.

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Extension of the touch sensing aspect of the phone screen, not the display aspect. Extending one without the other leads to over-engineered pause buttons, is what the parent comment was saying I think. When the number of unlabeled buttons get much higher than 1, people start to get confused.

I agree in part, just think that the jacket needs to be paired with a HUD or maybe have control/button labels that can shine through the fabric in order to open up that innovation.

I'm not sure we need screens on our jackets, we just need two-way communication. Right now, Jacquard only allows one-way communication (human -> device), but perhaps there could be a touch-sensitive way for the device to communicate as well.

This would be huge for things like heart monitors and emergency phone calls. A lot of room for "cool social apps for teens", and almost definitely for gaming/VR.

Good point. The two paths on a phone are touch/mic/gyro input and screen/speakers/vibe output, but we don't need all three of those outputs for clothing-based touch input to work.

> Right now, Jacquard only allows one-way communication (human -> device)

Wasn't there mention of light and haptic feedback?

Yes, this. If we didn't have phones as much as pervasive connectivity, through whatever network link is nearby (a phone, a watch, or a building with wifi), then the idea of how we interface with software changes. We could do it though voice like Alexa, or through smaller interface devices including those woven in.

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