Polyera developed a thin-film transistor technology that enabled them to create flexible E-Ink displays. Once they had a display, they needed a product to leverage it: WOVE.
WOVE is a smart watch replacement with a screen that wraps all the way around the wrist.
Because it leverages E-Ink display technology, which holds a display state passively and only requires power to change states, it allows users to customize the bands appearance with out a cost to battery life.
Despite its black and white screen, it still has most of the capabilities of any smart watch.
A magnetic latching system and the ability to add links to adjust for wrist size made the device comfortable and easy to pull on and off.
A major concern for the product was the minimum bend radius of the screen. Because the display is made of a series of laminated sheets, as you bend it the shear between the sheets increases very quickly. I did a lot of testing on samples that came directly from our production facility in Taiwan.
Most of my design time was spent refining the spinal backbone of the band. The sectioned appearance of the device hides a set of pins and grooves that allow the vertebrae to slide relative to each other in a way that simulates a pivot point inline with the screen.
A system using a single pivot, off axis from the screen, wasn’t possible because it would prescribe an arc that changes length as it bends. That length change would induce an even higher shear load on the display.
Patent: USD807350S1