Why I stopped wearing my Pebble — Part 1 of my thoughts on wearable technology

Musings of a Product Guy

I was one of the very first backers of the Pebble — and now I no longer wear it. People who know me often ask me why I’m not wearing it any more, so I thought I would share a bit of my experience.

This is going to be a two-part post on my thoughts on wearable technology.

In the first part, I’ll share my experiences with my Pebble — both the good and the bad — and why I ultimately stopped wearing it. And in the second part, I’ll dive into my thoughts on wearable tech as a whole and what the elements are that I believe will bring it to the mainstream.

At first, I loved my Pebble

I still remember the first day my Pebble arrived — I was stoked!

I originally backed the Pebble because I felt like I was backing an evolution in helping technology improve our daily lives. I would be able to receive emails, texts, and notifications on my wrist without pulling out my phone to check them (which I’m constantly reminded by my girlfriend can be quite disruptive). Plus, given the Pebble’s sizable user base, I was excited to see what apps might emerge that would be unique to the platform.

And the first few weeks were pretty great. I boasted about the ability to triage emails and texts without pulling out my phone. I felt like this was a GIANT step forward for enabling technology to work more seamlessly with peoples’ everyday lives.

But I started noticing issues from the beginning

I still remember my first dinner with the Pebble — when my girlfriend said, “I hope you pay attention to me and not just the watch!” She was joking, but in jest there was a bit of truth.

Because, as much as I was rudely checking my phone before, I was checking my watch even more! Now of course, I know you can turn on and off certain notifications, but to me the whole point of getting the Pebble was to scan notifications quickly and then triage appropriately (although at first you couldn’t dismiss notifications as there was not two-way communication).

But what I learned was that people DO notice you checking your watch. It ends up being almost as obtrusive as pulling out your phone (at least from my experience).

The other thing that happened was that, at first, email notifications on my Pebble weren’t working well. Now eventually these got fixed, but when they did, I realized I didn’t miss them! I only cared about the text message notifications; but because text messages tend to be more time sensitive, I ended up pulling out my phone anyway to respond to them. But emails — I didn’t miss their notifications when they were gone since I ended up pulling out my phone every 15 minutes or so anyway.

And then I stopped wearing it

So what happened? Well, a few things:

1. I realized I didn’t want to receive every notification, which is why I didn’t set my iPhone to vibrate with each one in the first place (Note: I do realize that the VIP settings of the iOS Mail app can help here, but I never set that up — not sure if I’m in the majority here). Therefore, the Pebble became MORE distracting because I was checking it more often (you couldn’t turn off vibrate at first). The text message notifications were nice, but reading text messages on my watch was almost as distracting as pulling out my phone.
2. The Pebble wasn’t very fashionable. This is something I didn’t expect to care about — I DEFINITELY wouldn’t consider myself a fashionable person by any stretch of the imagination, and neither would anyone who knows me. But the Pebble did stick out a bit (plus it didn’t hurt that my girlfriend called me out on it), whereas my current watch is appropriate for almost all situations. Plus, BECAUSE I had the Pebble, I noticed others reacting differently to me in meetings and social settings. I sensed their concern that I would be distracted by incoming notifications on my Pebble instead of interacting with them. This may be the result of cultural norms not having yet caught up with wearable tech, but it was certainly noticeable.
3. Because I didn’t find the notifications outside of text messages useful (and therefore turned them off), I was missing a real use case for the Pebble. I never dived into the apps since most of the original ones were just watch watch faces (though I do hear there are some interesting ones now). Controlling the music player was nice, though I tend to listen to more podcasts than I do music (I realize I’m definitely not in the majority here). And for each text message I ended up pulling out my phone anyway to respond. So for me, there was just no killer use case (I’ll dive into what I think some killer use cases might be for wearable tech in Part 2).

So where am I now?

I have stopped wearing my Pebble. It actually broke a couple of times (the screen display had some issues), and after the second time I sent it back, I realized I wasn’t missing much — so I never put my replacement back on. (NOTE: I do realize it breaking probably distorted my opinion, but I’ve tried to be as objective as possible here)

I think I’m like most consumers in this way in that — to change my habits, you have to be above and beyond the current solution. And for me, without a killer use case, I just went back to my regular watch.

Now having said that, the Pebble Kickstarter campaign was clearly targeted at early adopters who should expect these bumps and bruises, and not the general population. However, I do consider myself an early adopter, but I found myself just not falling in love with the Pebble and going back to my old watch.

So what are my plans going forward? I’ll probably try the Pebble again in a few months and see if there are some killer apps out there for me. But again, it’ll be me forcing myself to use it, not a significant use case that draws me back.

Coming in Part 2…

While it may seem contradictory based on this post, I am in fact VERY bullish on wearable tech — even though the Pebble didn’t work for me. This was one of the primary reasons I backed Pebble’s Kickstarter campaign — because I truly believe wearable tech will enable technology to work more seamlessly with peoples’ everyday lives.

So in Part 2, I’ll walk through what I think some of the elements wearable tech needs to address to gain more mass market appeal.