Wearable as a service: Why you should require more from your wearable

You spent from $50 to $600 for buying a tracker with many sensors. Why do you need it? It is clear what value a professional athlete gets from his Garmin: he knows what heart rate he/she will have after 5, 10, 50 km of running. But if you are not an ultra-marathon runner, not a triathlete, then why do you need a device?

Wearable devices have long entered our lives. Statistics and forecasts show that the number of units is growing exponentially. More and more people track their pulse, steps, the quality of sleep. Happy owners of Apple Watch 4, Mawi Band, and other devices with ECG sensors monitor their heart condition every day.

The forecasted increase of the number of wearable devices; source: Statista, according to Gartner.

Of course, I understand that you check the activity rates, sleep, pulse, but what do they give you? The joy of having walked 10,000 steps in a day and hit the ‘top 10% of walkers on the planet,’ according to Google/Apple/Huawei statistics? Amusing skill to guess your pulse in different states? Is that enough? I ask this question as being an owner as well as a creator of a wearable device. What is the real value for the user and how to increase it?

Okay, most likely you’ve read articles like these: ‘This is how 10,000 steps a day will make you healthy’ or ‘Optimal morning heart rate at your 30s is 60 beats per minute’. After reading such materials, the received data become meaning.

But things get harder when we talk, for instance, about meditations or counting calories. Of course, you can measure the pulse before and after meditation and see if it has decreased or increased. But you spent $50–600 on a wristband and $13 a month on Calm or another meditation app. And you still have to compare the pulse rate before and after meditation in your mind!

Data meaning. The meditation quality assessment. Is today better than yesterday?

Wristbands like Xiaomi measure not only the pulse but also the intervals between heartbeats (heart rate variability, HRV). With all this data, you can assess the nervous system’s condition: whether your body is under stress or recovering resources. So how do you think, what indicator is it better for the meditation quality evaluating: pulse or HRV?

Let’s consider meditations in more detail. We figured out that your fitness tracker collects data that allows you to evaluate the state of the nervous system, and you also have an application for meditation. What’s next?

Option one, pessimistic: you have a Xiaomi tracker. You spent money on a wristband, which can measure more than pulse, but the developers didn’t analyze this invaluable data. You still judge the results of meditation based solely on your feelings, by paying for Headspace and not understanding whether meditation helps you or not. If you are a developer and can create an application for Xiaomi, then jump to the next paragraph, if you’re not, then you cannot use the HRV data.

Option two, more optimistic, but still not perfect: You don’t have Xiaomi, but a wristband from company X. The X app shows the HRV rate and assesses the performance of the nervous system. And you, just like the user from the previous paragraph, pay $13 a month for Headspace. Due to the HRV data, you can understand how meditation influences you. But you still have to switch between applications, write down numbers or keep them in memory, compare them in your mind.

To track the dynamics of your condition, to compare different meditation techniques, you will have to record your results on a sheet (in e-form or on paper). Otherwise, you will look at the HRV rate and say to yourself: ‘Yes, today I have meditated well. Yesterday the result wasn’t good enough. Or was it?’ Again, if you are a developer, you can create an application for storing, processing, and visualizing your data. And if not? Then there is no option but keep notes manually, or to face the fact that the effect of your meditation is unknown.

There should be some third option! And it indeed exists. The problem is that this option exists at the of several businesses — as any invention is created at the junction of several areas.

So, the ‘third option.’ The developers of the app X allow sharing analytics with Headspace, while Headspace adds a function for evaluating the meditation quality by using some standard HRV indicators. As a result, the approach to meditation looks like this:

1. You choose the meditation in the Headspace app.
2. Headspace redirects you to the X app, which assesses the state of your nervous system by pulse/ECG.
3. Headspace receives this data and starts the selected meditation.
4. After meditation, Headspace offers you to measure the pulse/ECG with the X device again. You do it, the app sends the data to the Headspace, and the Headspace saves it.

As a result of this cooperation, Headspace can objectively evaluate the quality of meditations, recommend some advanced practices, improve your user experience. Company X captures the attention of the Headspace’s audience, which actively practices meditations and wants to understand their effectiveness. And you, as a user, get new benefits too. The data your wearable device collects is starting to work for you. Maybe you will decide to choose another meditation practice(for example, based on real metrics you could find perfect “point” on the picture below where you need to “review method”).

Meditation progress explanation. image credit

It is challenging to choose the right one from hundreds of methods, and the data from the bracelet will help you to determine what works the best for you.

Availability of data. Calories we can’t digitize

The fundamental approach to building a beautiful body shape is a proper diet, with healthy foods and calories counting(according to the picture below). For us, the fans of digitalization, the slimming starts with the MyFitnessPal app installation.

Weight change results, for people with different strategies. Image credit

We count every meal. Well, some nightly snacks do not come into the ‘eating journal.’ We convince ourselves that ‘if it doesn’t exist on the app, then it has no calories.’ Another method for self-deception is to believe that a muffin’s calories don’t count if we eat it after 20-minute jogging.

Meanwhile, Google Fit counts the calories that we burn all the time, and it also calculates the calories we spent from walking/running. And it turns out, that MyFitnessPal even has synchronization with Google Fit. And most likely, it works. Well, we see an objective result, not a single calorie will hide from us! But is it true?

Here the real story begins. What if I have a Huawei phone or an iPhone? And a Huawei tracker that counts the steps all the time, but only gives data to the standard Huawei application?

Suddenly it turns out that it is impossible to synchronize data directly. Such a scheme comes to mind:

1. Synchronize data from the Huawei bracelet to the Huawei application.
2. From the Huawei app to Google Fit.
3. From Google Fit to MyFitnessPal.

I tested this approach and still did not sure that something has changed in MyFiData meaningtnessPal, so just in case I had to reject the muffins.

Feel the problem? Huawei/Apple use your data, but you have no such opportunity. If we talk about calories, this doesn’t seem crucial. But there is, for example, the case of Monobank and it’s sports deposits: if you walk 10,000 steps every day in a month(i don’t remember actual numbers, but it’s doesn’t matter), the deposit interest rate rises. I don’t always carry the phone in my pocket, so I want the steps registered by wristband to be taken into account too. Since I bought the device, why wouldn’t it help me to make money? But here we again deal with the fact that Huawei is not very willing to share data.

Functionality duplication. There can’t be too many alarms, can it?

The last case is about alarm clocks. Now many applications can wake you up in a suitable way. Default alarm clock. An alarm clock which forces you to solve the arithmetic problem. An alarm clock that does not turn off until you scan the QR code in the bathroom. An alarm clock that plays your favorite Spotify jazz playlist every morning. And wearable devices apps which exist completely independently: Xiaomi has its alarm clock, Samsung has its own. Have you ever woken up at 6 am on Sunday just because you forgot to turn off the alarm on your wearable device? I have. It’s lucky that I don’t use a device like one on the picture below.

Wearable with shocking capabilities. Image credit

We wear most of the wearable devices all the time. Who wants 5,000 steps after work not to be counted in the statistics? Or who wants the Samsung Health app doesn’t calculate sleep statistics when you are finally working on your routine?

The problem is that the market of wearable devices has long been formed, and it was even informally established the ‘standard of functionality,’ which we expect to see on a device. But this functionality still did not become the official standard for the operating system, which would allow you, at last, giving up ten alarm clocks in two applications.

Conclusions

So, to use wearable devices, but we get less benefit:

1. We receive data in an ‘abstract’ form, although we could use it to evaluate the other applications’ usefulness.
2. Corporations collect and use our data, but we are not able to dispose of and receive benefits.
3. Even though the market of wearable devices is formed, we still don’t have a ‘standard of functionality’ that would help to avoid duplicating functions in different applications.

After reading this article, you, as a user, may feel indignant. But don’t be in a hurry to get angry. Behind all the issues mentioned in the article are sophisticated technical, legal, and business challenges that have to be solved by wearable devices producers. And they cannot handle all those problems in a day.

In the next articles, I will talk about the mechanisms of integration of devices and third-party applications which we can and should use in the technical implementation. Also, I will talk about what business/legal problems are behind this.