Why Your Watch May Know You Better Than Your Best Friend

Having worked in the health industry for many years I’ve been interested in the convergence of health, technology and mobility.

The global wearable technology market stood at $750 USD million in 2012 and is expected to reach $5.8 billion USD in 2018, with a compound growth rate of 40.8% from 2012 to 2018.1

We can expect this forecast will bump up with Apple’s announcement. After all, Apple has a history of backing big opportunities. This time is no different.  Apple will have to jostle for its place amongst the current field. Mashable Wearables is awash with entrants seeking to play; from Samsung, Nike, Intel, Sony, and Nissan.Apple doesn’t shy away from a skirmish – it certainly didn’t in 2007 when it launched the iPhone or 2010 with the iPad – and Watch will gain ground quickly.

But for Apple and others, wearables should be considered a long term game.

Here’s the thing…what these devices are today will be only a fraction of their potential in several year’s time.When smartphone’s first launched they were heavy. They didn’t have picture-perfect bevelled edges which glinted in the right light. They didn’t have the commercial advertising that made that them look better than a new Maserati on a sun-drenched coastline. And they seriously lacked the functionality we’ve come to expect today.

In fact when Apple and Google first launched their phones it was common to hear people say “why do I need one of those, myBlackberry works just fine for email”.Of course we know what happened next.

Now we can’t do without them.

If you don’t believe me, try taking a phone away from a teenager and see what happens. I tried it once. Next time I’ll wear body armour.

While some people use their smartphone like it’s always been with us, I’m still in awe of what these things can do. Literally, our phones go to space for us and back everyday. What’s not to be amazed by?

Wearables will go through the same evolution. So when we look at these devices today and think they’re a little bulky and we critique their battery life and compare them to luxurious Swiss dress watches, we might think back to where smartphones started from.

There’s another push why wearables are so important. Smartphones have hit a limit which wearables may overcome.

One of the ways to get your heart rate on a smartphone is to press your finger to the phone’s light and hold. Other than that, the only way to connect your phone with yourself is to strap the phone to your chest.

The limit of the smartphone is that it cannot always stay in direct contact with us, in order to connect us to ourselves. That’s where wearables play such a key role.

This role isn’t about giving us yet another device to become enamoured by. The role of wearables is to reduce the chasm of biological connectivity between our phone and ourselves. Even though the phone fits neatly into the palm of our hand, this distance may as well have been the other side of the world in terms of user experience.

As wearables close this gap a new universe of measures will open up to us.

The concept of tracking biology isn’t a new one. Just ask Alex Pentland. Also dubbed the godfather of wearables he’s identified 100 possible metrics for us to track through studies which he commenced in 1973.While it might seem like a distant vision that we would want to track so many metrics, many wearable devices are tracking more than a handful of these already.

Rock created a fascinating analysis of which wearable devices track which metrics (specific image link). From temperature through the skin conduction, there’s a lot already being covered by more than watches. And this market is still in its infancy.

This breadth of measures may make Apple’s Watch pale in comparison. But lets think about it. Would we really be ready for a mainstream wearable device to track so many new areas? For Watch to launch with too many metrics would have been like Apple releasing NFC on the first iPhone, and we know all good things take time.To get to this vision will require wearables to expand the list of metrics that we see today.  As much as the aesthetic of wearable technology is important, customers will also choose devices based on the variety of metrics they capture, and the fit of these metrics with their lifestyle.

We will see providers compete on metrics, just like they compete on screen size in the smartphone market today.

How these devices then connect with vast ecosystems to make use of these measures will also be important, just as its been for smartphones and apps.

While many of us may question the value (and privacy) of capturing this type of personal data on watches and phones, the most significant opportunity is for these devices to tell us more about ourselves.They will make us aware of information about our biology that, for the vast majority of us, previously would have been discovered through a visit to the doctor or hospital.

Sure, we might not need this information every day. After all, do you really need to know what your heart rate was when you ate breakfast? But by becoming aware our data is available, we may spot patterns about ourselves that we didn’t expect. For some, this information might even help us avoid a crisis.

The most useful purpose for technology is not technology for its own sake, but that it may inform and change human behaviour for the better. Equally valuable is that it can do this in an unobtrusive way that requires as little effort from us as carrying a device. I’ll leave it with you to consider if email passes this test.Beyond ourselves as individuals, our information will have potential uses at the aggregate level.Imagine what it would be like if you could compared your stress levels to those who are the happiest people in the world. Would it prompt you to change the structure of your week? Maybe even change jobs?Imagine if you realised that the sleep cycle you’ve held for the last 6 months could be detrimental to your health based on studies of average sleep cycles?

Imagine if you could see the collective heartbeat of the stadium during the winning goal of a World Cup final?

These are just some of the possibilities that could be available to us, in an era like we have never seen before.

This week a friend of mine said to me “I wouldn’t want to share my information”. Many of us think the same…myself included.

Then I think of what we see on Twitter and facebook. We share incredibly personal stories on these platforms, sometimes to audiences well beyond our network of friends.

If today we can connect through 140 characters, maybe sharing some of our biological information will find a place too? For example, a university student sharing their heart rate when they opened their exam results.

The internet has a history of challenging the things we thought we would never do. At one time we questioned whether we would use our phone’s GPS to help us locate each other. Today this functionality comes standard. Why would wearables be any different.

These developments come with their own challenges. Returning to Alex Pentland:

“Any technology that can capture and transmit your surroundings mid-stride can be abused. We’re more attuned than ever to the data we leave online — digital bread crumbs, Pentland calls them — but the data we give to a sociometer or a device like Google Glass is potentially far more damaging. Pentland sees the benefits of his technology as limitless; but so too are the possibilities for abuse.”2

These are just some of the potentials we may see in years to come.With the release of iPhone 6 smartphones have hit their stride, and in such a relatively short timeframe. Think of what we’ll see in Watch 6.
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Photo Credits:
Image 1: www.flickr.com/photos/rafaelnepo/14968744809/
Image 2: www.flickr.com/photos/keoni101/7069578953/
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