Put a Bird on It: Why Jewelbots Aren’t a Fitness Tracker for Kids
I love that sketch. First of all, because I love Portlandia (this is my favorite episode by far). Second of all, because we’ve all seen phenomenon like this. Jeggings, Uggs, Tiny Cars, Bespoke Coffee Shops, when one brand does something successful everyone jumps on and makes it canon.
I had a call last month with someone in hardware who has been extremely successful and sold his hardware company to a huge brand. As I have looked up to him for a while, I was excited at the chance to talk about Jewelbots. As soon as we got on the phone the first thing he said was;
“here is what you need to do: stop what you are doing and make a fitness tracker. It’s the only way you’re going to make money right now. You need to do it as soon as you can.”
Shocked, I said “why? we have lots of traction, had a very successful Kickstarter, Bill Nye loves us, why should we change what we are doing?” His response was “Oh, I didn’t know about all that, but right now that’s the only way to be successful. You should really consider pivoting.” I knew I was on the wrong call. He sounded like he didn’t care about our product, which is about girls, and his suggestion was the opposite of our experience and research working with girls.
Let’s take a step back for a second and talk about the landscape of wearables. It seems like everything being released now is some form of fitness tracker, even devices like Apple Watch have an accelerometer. Why is this?
Wearables are a relatively new development in technology. When human beings build technology it often takes us a while to find the implementation that makes it indispensable.
When movies were invented people used to go to the theater just to see footage of waves crashing into a shore, or hundreds of people coming out of a factory after work(source). They’d never seen anything like it, so it was a novelty and exciting to see. It was only after many iterations of the movie theater that we came up with what we know as movies today. When we found what worked it stuck.
When soda was invented it was marketed as a medicinal health tonic. People rushed to get all their ails cured by soda water and syrup. Now, it’s singlehandedly causing childhood obesity, we would never consider it the healthier choice. We had to try many different methods before coming up with today’s popular soft drink.
How does that align with wearables? Well, when wearables were first invented everything was a fitness tracker. “Put an accelerometer on it” is the wearables industry’s “put a bird on it”. This hasn’t been great, did you know that while sales have been high, retention rates for fitness trackers are under 50%?
Wearables are a brilliant human invention that haven’t found their fit yet. I think we’re still exploring and testing to find what wearables are really for as an application.
At Jewelbots, we think the future of wearables is communication. Now I’m going to tell you why.
The most fun part of my job is the fact that I get to hang out with Middleschoolers all the time. That may not sound fun, but it really, really, is. Girls in middle school are the best. They’re not old enough to be self-conscious or embarrassed by their opinions. They’re unfiltered, energetic, and just spaz out when they are excited about something. So great.
For user research we’ve talked to over 200 girls. Really diverse groups across socioeconomic classes. One thing I started noticing in the more affluent schools were girls wearing fitness trackers like the Nike Fuelband and the Jawbone Up. So, I started asking them “how are your steps today?” or “are you meeting your fitness goals?”; shockingly, none of them had any idea what their step count was, many didn’t even download the associated apps. When I asked them why they even had their fitness trackers they would say some variant of:
“I don’t know, I just like it because it’s a wearable.”
This fact just floors me. No one is building or designing for these girls, so, they are stuck with the products made for adults that they don’t even use.
Through our conversations with them we learned what they DO want in a wearable. Something we’ve heard from them over and over again is how important their friendships are. Spending time with their friends, showing affection, communicating; these are their biggest priorities at this age.
Now we are building the Jewelbots Heart: our first wearable dedicated to friendship. With Jewelbots you can show off your friendships by matching with your friends and being notified when they are nearby. You can also send them secret messages in your own languages (something that came up a lot in our research: girls love coming up with their own languages that only they understand). You can also code your bracelets to do whatever an Apple watch can do (notifications, send/receive messages).
Our patent pending technology of communication over mesh networks using wearables has many applications. From first responders to factory floors, to elder care.
However, we’re focused on building FIRST for the demographic that decides how the rest of us talk to each other. Text messaging, using Emoji, Snapchat… all these trends begin with teenagers identifying new forms of communication, adopting them, and convincing the rest of us to do the same.
Unlike most wearables companies, Jewelbots is starting with the most influential demographic first; and we’re not building a fitness tracker because that’s not what these girls want. We’re making for girls exactly what they’ve asked us for, and we can’t wait to see what they decide to build with it.
Excited about Jewelbots? We’re shipping soon! Buy yours now to ensure you can be part of our first shipment.
