The WatchMe project, imagined by Natalia Marmasse and Chris Schmandt of the MIT Speech Interface Group, is a personal communicator built into a watch that helps its wearer reduce interruptions at inconvenient moments.

By providing awareness of each others’ activities, and multiple channels for communication, the watch enables the caller to choose the appropriate modality (synchronous or asynchronous, voice or text communication) based on the inferred situation of the other person. According to the information collected, you could negotiate the availability of your friend (via an sms) and then migrate to a mutually appropriate alternative communication channel (a call).

The display gives information such as whether the person is involved in a conversation (from audio analysis), their mode of locomotion (from wireless accelerometers), GPS technology provides their location, etc.

In the picture, one sees that Joe left home ten minutes ago, he is driving and in a conversation, and he has sent two voice and three text messages.