The product & tech community gets really jazzed about sexy but nonessential products (you can see that reflected in PH's leaderboards) while often paying far less attention to important & potentially life changing ideas like Kanega Watch. There's a huge population of seniors who are being completely underserved by technology and the goal of "extending independence with dignity" is a great one.
The team seems to have done a lot of qualitative research with seniors while developing the watch & taken into consideration all sorts of small details I wouldn't have known to consider (for example, having the watch speak directly into a hearing aid so people around you don't need to know you're getting help).
They've already put thought into designing for users with memory issues - even if you forget your watch is there it will buzz to get your attention. But the watch does seem to rely on pre-set voice commands to interact with user - I wonder what level of flexibility is built in for users not getting the words exactly right? Or for those whose speech may be a little less clear & distinct vs average voice recognition user?
Overall a great product idea & one that, if it launches, could make a lot of seniors' lives better.
We featured this one on CrowdLoot the other day - great social aspect to it.
BUT.. I remember my computer graphics lecturer back at university (10 years ago) was doing a lot of work with "talking heads" - generating computerised heads that could accurately replicate the look of a face as it talks, right down to musculature.
I remember him saying that they wanted to create computer-aided assistants that could patch into the senior citizen's television and instruct them when it was time to take medication, etc.
Apparently the biggest barrier was that the degree of dementia within the senior citizen community - that the elderly might imagine the talking head telling them to do other things.
I wonder if this watch might have similar issues
Mashable for iPhone
Brutal Teardowns