AN INSPIRING DESIGN STORY: EONE
Because telling time shouldn’t require sight.
"With functionality you shouldn’t have to give up on style." Eone adopts this as a motto when it comes to designing watches that are both practical and stylish.
Eone, as a brand with a mission, values inclusivity, accessibility, aesthetics, quality, giving back, diversity and sustainability. The brand aims to design both functional and beautiful watches that are inclusive products for everyone.
Hyungsoo Kim, founder of Eone, through family, friends, and loved ones who are blind came across with the problems the people with impaired vision have when it comes to watches. Kim met a classmate at MIT when he was a graduate student there who was visually impaired when he asked him what time it was. After telling him the time Kim, noticed he was wearing a watch and wondered how he checked the time. So he asked and turns out it was a talking watch that tells the time out loud through a button. Even though this sounded cool it was explained to him that it was inconvenient and embarrassing to use in public and various occasions. Kim then realized this was a watch that you can’t use with other people around. Yet the other alternative was an analogue that is more impractical than the talking one. He was then inspired to create a watch that would eliminate this issue of impracticality and collaborated with designers and people with vision impairments. He aimed to create watches that would tackle the problems the people with vision impairments go through with it and is fashion forward.
Started with a friendship, founded to solve a problem, Eone, named the apple of its eye the Bradley timepiece after Bradley Synder, a former naval officer who became blind after serving in Afghanistan as a bomb diffuser. Snyder, after his injury set his mind to thriving in a world that is not designed for people with vision impairments. Brad won gold and silver medals in swimming at the London Paralympic Games in 2012, and 3 gold medals and 1 silver medal in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio breaking a world record.
''I will not let my blindness build a brick wall around me. I would give my eyes one hundred times again to have the chance to do the things I have done and the things I can still do.''
- Brad Synder
Eone chose Brad as their spokesperson because he shared the same values as to break down obstacles for people with vision impairments and that these obstacles are formed from social inequality and not from the disability itself.
Eone’s revolutionary design by its functionality and style, The Bradley timepiece, features raised markers that allow you to feel the time by touch. A triangular marker is used for twelve and elongated line segments for three, six, and nine. Where as for the rest shorter line segments are used as markers. Two magnetized ball bearings travel around the watch face in separate tracks: one track around the center of the watch face for the minute, and one track around the outside edge of the watch face for the hour. This allows individuals with vision impairments to tell the time by touching the magnetized balls and the markers they are aligned with. Eone, while designing a watch that would eliminate all the obstacles people face while using the talking watch and the analogue that wasn’t functioning, as it should, also paid attention to the fact that besides functionality and practicality, individuals with vision impairments care about style as well. Therefore, Eone introduced the Bradley timepiece, a watch that is for everyone in the sense of functionality and style.