We have been working on some principles for our activity in Casa Jasmina. One of these principles is: “Try it until it seems normal.”

How do things from our future become part of our daily life? That happens when we no longer notice the things. If we can make ourselves believe that something feels like an everyday object, maybe, some day, it really will be normal.

If we can never make it feel normal, no matter how we try — if they always feels awkward, broken, strange or difficult — then probably the future doesn’t have a lot of room for these things.

To start simply, a month ago, I acquire a Nike armband for the Apple iPhone 6. It’s a lightweight yet sturdy orange strap of velcro, elastic, and translucent plastic, that allows users to turn an Apple mobile into a wearable device. The Nike strap is similar to wearable straps made by competitors Belkin, Griffin, Shocksock and so on, and at first glance it looks, frankly, pretty weird.

I wondered what difference this object would make to my life, so, as a Casa Jasmina project, I decided to wear this thing for an entire month.

The Nike company is full of ex-Apple people, so this armband has received a lot of Nike design thought within an Apple frame of mind. Even though it’s basically just an elastic strap, it almost screams that it has a cool phone inside, with bright aviation-orange perforated dots, a light-reflective Nike swoosh, and stretchy, waterproof, breathe-through detailing, complete with glossy black velcro chevrons.

This wearable Nike device really puts up a big fuss about being a high-tech wearable — but why? Wouldn’t it make more sense to hide the expensive phone discreetly, and normalize the situation? If you want to strap a phone on your upper arm, why do you need a bright, gaudy phone gleaming on your arm?

Well, it’s like this. Consider the demographic use-case these Nike designers are confronting. The designers imagine their Nike armband user as an athletic, headlong young woman, a Just-Do-It female jogger who is, charging around town in her brief, body-hugging Nike outfit. She is running — maybe even parkouring — but there’s no place in her sleek, friction-free Nike outfit in which she can put her Apple mobile.

The Nike designers contemplate every ergonomic part of her body, because Nike guys are excellent at that, and they realize — it just has to go on the upper arm. There’s no other reasonable place to put it. People may notice it there, but so what? Just Do It Nike Woman is already getting plenty of attention — because she is young, fit, active and dashing around in public in flashy Nike sports gear.

So it’s no use hiding her iPhone. One the contrary: as a female athlete, she probably WANTS people to know that that she has an elite iPhone 6. Why? Because she is safer that way.

Marauders and molesters will not dare to attack her — because of her phone. In the emerging circumstances of the Internet of Things, they should be properly AFRAID of a woman who is publicly brandishing an Apple mobile in Nike gear. She almost certainly has a fitness app in her phone, but she might have all kinds of antitheft and tracking apps in there too, too. A woman running with an iPhone 6 ought be scarier than a woman running with an angry dog on a leash.

So it’s a good idea to be obvious, insistent, even somewhat threatening about her iPhone. Her fancy mobile is like a visible proof that the cops are her friends and that she can afford to press charges in court.

Jasmina is a much more enthusiastic user of mobiles than I am. So, Jasmina was the first to try this Nike strap. Instead of jogging with it (we don’t jog) she wore it over her street clothes. Women immediately remarked that it looked like she was wearing a Jewish armband under the Nazi regime. Jasmina’s experiment ended immediately.

Women get rather a lot critical assessment about their clothing. Even male harassment is pretty common. So this made me the next candidate. I put my phone in my orange armband and wore it there for a month.

Nobody said anything to me about it. Sometimes the Turinese do publicly comment on my clothes — when I’m wearing a suit and tie. Then I get sarcastic remarks from street dudes along the line of “Hey boss!” However, the male dress code in my hipster émigré district of San Salvario is pretty relaxed. It takes a lot to get people to bother about my clothing.

So, how can we know if a Nike wearable armband looks “weird” or looks “normal”? Well, it’s certainly not statistically normal. During the month I saw only one other guy in Turin wearing a Nike armband.

He was a scholarly geek in pocketless shorts and a Tshirt, and travelling on the underground Metro in Torino, and obviously he’d decided this armband was practical. I noticed him instantly — he didn’t notice me, because he didn’t care. Nobody cared. A Nike armband is aggressive-looking, but nowhere near so fierce and transgressive as Google Glass, which truly upsets some people, or even an Apple Watch, which observant people will in fact notice. An athletic armband with a phone inside it is a mild social eccentricity, like wearing huge sunglasses or smoking a cigar. I can get away with it.

So: what does it feel like turn your phone into a wearable? It’s pretty useful if you are exercising hard, and really need a phone, and lack any practical alternative. Otherwise, it is plenty awkward.

To look at a display strapped to your bicep takes some twisting and craning. It’s hard to operate a touch-sensitive iPhone through a sturdy, sweat-resistant plastic screen. If the phone has a message, it’s difficult to read it. If it rings with a voice message, to try to talk into your upper arm is ridiculous. Almost everything a mobile phone can do works much worse when it’s strapped to your upper arm.

But I was conscientious, so I did my best to find some advantages. Listening to music works, because the earphone cables are shorter when a player is strapped to your arm. So, I spent a lot of time listening to the complete masterworks of “Subsonica.” The phone works adequately as a music player, and I like the Turinese band rather better than the Nike armband, but the best lesson I learned from this experience is that my cheap earphones are worthless. If I want to listen to music while walking outside, I really need to treat music with more technical respect.

Eventually, I did get used to the Nike armband. It became normal. It’s convenient in a few ways and inconvenient in many others, and since I’m not an active athlete who lives in sports gear, it’s not really a device meant for me. I don’t need a wearable, but I’m glad I tried it.

I discovered that it de-stabilized my relationship to the phone.

Since I had to struggle with my phone so much, in its new, awkward situation as a wearable device, I became much more interested in mobiles than I was before. The phone itself became visible to me again, because it was de-normalized; it seemed weirder, more futuristic. So I paid attention to it: I got a few new apps, I moved the old apps around, I tinkered with the settings. It was a refreshed device, because it wasn’t stuck in a cargo pocket or buried in the bottom of a bag. The experiment with an armband broke the hypnosis of my settled habits. Maybe I’ll be more mindful for a while, I’ll take more care, I’ll think deeper, I’ll do better.

With that said, though, a month is enough. I’m putting this completed experiment aside, and I doubt I will wear my wearable armband again. Basta.