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Eone is a watch brand with the goal of making watches both fashionable and accessible for everyone. The founder, Hyungsoo Kim, learned from a blind friend that there were very few options, none of which were fashionable, when it came to timekeeping for those with visual impairment. It was either talking watches (too loud) or tactile ones (impracticably fragile).
Eone's minimalistic design is subtle, reserved, and apart from its mission of universal, inclusive design, reminds us to be grateful that we have the ability to do just that, and consider those that do not.
Having worn The Bradley watch ($285) just about every day since receiving it back in July, I've gotten countless compliments, and it's been a great conversation piece through and through.
We should all only be so lucky to be able to look at a watch let alone anything. Eone's watches are works of modern art that help people who are blind and living with low vision tell time in style. They'll also make the rest of us regularly appreciate our eyesight.
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How many times a day, or an hour, do you thank your lucky stars for your vision, if you have it? Most of us with our senses more or less intact take them for granted. Here's a little piece of art to help change that, and it doesn't look half bad to boot, either.
There are plenty of Braille watches out there, but from what we've seen and heard none all too durable. Sure, there are talking watches, but who really wants to have to talk to a robot every time they want to know the time, or anything else?
This is the conclusion that MIT graduate student Hyungsoo Kim came to after a blind friend declared to him that there were "hardly elegant, quality alternatives," as Eone's story has it. A quick Google query more or less confirms this (at least for me).
Eone's design is about as simple as it gets, and in some sense, it seems remarkable that something exactly like it wasn't developed 150 years ago alongside the wristwatch's very invention.
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The brand offers several designs, but they're all basically the same in concept - each is dedicated to an exceptionally inspirational individual who is either blind or living with visual impairment. This one, which Eone teamed up with architecture and design magazine Dezeen to create, is named "The Bradley," after a naval officer who lost his vision while diffusing a bomb in Afghanistan. Since, he's competed in multiple Paralympic Games, taking home multiple gold and silver medals and even taking a world record.
All you have at work here are two magnets controlling two stainless steel bearing balls held in place by a recessed track, with one running around the circumference of the matte-titanium watch face telling the hour and the other, within the watch face, denoting the minute within the hour. The hours are marked by small pronounced steel ticks that make up the dial, save for the 12 o'clock marks, which is an inverted triangle. Setting time works just like with any analog watch: There's a small pin with a dial at the end of it that you pull out and spin. It's really as simple as that.
I can't speak for the blind (though I have a friend in mind to gift this watch to the next time I run into him), but the very moment I picked up the watch I was able to close my eyes and tell the time without much trouble at all. Feeling for the bearing ball along the recessed track on the outside, I counted ticks from the 12 o'clock position, found it was five-something, and went back over the face doing the same to figure the minute. (It was 5:30 and time to leave the office.)
As for durability, I ran it through my regular gamut of tests: I've dropped it, I've soaked it in both sink- and seawater (repeatedly), and I haven't washed it once. Now, the brand calls it splashproof, so I wouldn't get too wild with it, but my tests prove that it can handle a little more than the brand suggests. Even the leather's held up with no cracking at all after about three months of use and countless dips into the drink at the rail of my boat.
Final thoughts
Having worn it just about every day since receiving it back in July, I've gotten countless compliments, and it's been a great conversation piece through and through. It has also made me immensely more grateful for these old eyes of mine. We could all stand to wear a little more humility and gratitude on the daily.
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