Yves Béhar talks about Jawbone’s smallest headset yet
The California-based design entrepreneur and creative director of Jawbone talks about the company's latest - and smallest - model of wireless headset
By Cate St. Hill
Wearable technology company Jawbone, under the creative direction of designer Yves Béhar, has launched its smallest wireless headset to date. The new ERA, around 40 per cent smaller than its predecessor and three years in the making, is no bigger than your little finger and aims to alleviate the common problem of people looking like call centre operators when they wear hands-free headsets with bulky ear loops or hooks.
'At Jawbone, our belief is that wearable devices should blend seamlessly into everyday life; be so discreet that one forgets they are being worn,' Béhar says. 'Wearable devices that people will actually wear demand countless explorations of components, geometries, form and fit to deliver an accessory that adds value to our daily experiences, but also springs into action only when needed. With ERA, we first focused on the dramatically small size, designing the technology inside the desired form factor.'
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In order to create such a small design, Jawbone has created custom batteries to fit the tight internal volume and designed a super compact internal layout that takes advantage of every single space inside the cavity. Since its first headset a decade ago, Jawbone has been able to shrink the size by four times. 'This required more than 30 iterations of different proportions, exploring different width, depth and length configurations to make the headset as small as possible when worn on the face and still pack as much power as possible,' comments Béhar.
A new medical-grade silicon ear bud, based on three years of user testing, is its most stable and comfortable yet, attaching the headset to the ear on the outer ear ridges and not relying on the eardrum cavity for support. Béhar adds: 'We calibrated the ear bud material to be supple and soft for long hours of wear, with the silicon exterior having enough surface grip to stay safely in place, even while running.' As with previous Jawbone headsets, the ERA has patented NoiseAssassin technology, which detects speech from facial vibrations and filters it from background noise. It is how the name Jawbone came about, because the small node, which helps distinguish the wearer's voice, is positioned exactly on the jawbone.
Another design consideration was that people want a headset that lasts as long as possible, without having to charge it throughout the day. The new ERA has a compact charging case that can be added to a key ring or put in a pocket, adding six additional hours of battery life, bringing its total talk time to 10 hours. The aluminium case is designed with a flip mechanism that enables charging and triggers a micro-perforated LED to visually indicate the charging level.
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Jawbone hopes people will use the ERA not just for phone calls, but to listen to music, watch short videos and integrate it with Siri or Google Now. As Behar says: 'Multitasking is part of our lives. We are engaging with the world in a multisensory way, simultaneously talking on the phone and using our hands to type or swipe, walk the dog, or even get dressed and groomed in the morning. We see ERA as a command centre for our mobile lives, and it starts with liberating our hands.'
