All you need to know about Wearables + Smart Data
The wearable market is projected to grow to half a billion devices by 2019, growing fivefold from 109 million in 2014 (Cisco). An impressive figure and not surprising as we are all surrounded by the wearable buzz novelty machine all across the media consumption channels, from global consumer electronic, fashion brands to Kickstarter they are all fast tracking wearable’s at lightning speed, exploring what sticks evoking a sense that they are being created faster than we can consume them as post materialist surplus.
Wearables come from all over the world, in all form factors and shapes like watches, pins, cameras, bracelets, sensor clips and rings, all with the same end; quantify behavioral information and enable a utility of some sort.
Some argue that design follows function as a vanity rule vs. a wearable by design should be seamless and disappear from our conscious objective view alas without purpose a wearable has no function, to serve as personalized accessories, augmentations that re completely utilitarian and extend our human capacities and senses as occluded from our view and act as an interface or sensor, that is the true goal of a wearable to become indispensable and useful. True ubiquitous computing.
Smart engineers and product designers are converging everything that can be consumerized with information technologies. Converting dumb objects into smart objects with some form of utility or quantified interface.
By far all-wearable electronics aim to capitalize the smartphone industry, as they become an obvious sidekick, tethering hungry for connectivity, computational capacity and interface to our on-demand gratification.
Wearables by nature inherit a planned obsolesced due to positive technology progression, logically making them highly disposable and by consequence an environmental nuance to consider as well from a brand point of view.
Whatever the future of wearable is, we know for sure that what we are experiencing is just only the begging as they mature over time and the amount of data collection increase, the cost of sensors decreases, brands and consumer electronics excel on creating value from the transcoded behavioral signals into digital data collections that infer smart data objects by correlations and pattern detection in our behavior and context.
How is data collected?
Our wearables devices are equipped a vast variety of sensors, from accelerometer (motion), gyroscope (force), magnetometer (rotation), UV, Microphone, optical hear rate monitor, galvanic skin response (GSR), body temperature and blood oxygen. The number of sensors on these devices is projected to increase to over 10 from an average of 4, I can envision the micronization and of additional sensors like chemical, infrared and spectrographs that will truly bring our wearable and sensors into a Star Trek like tricorder. All relaying data streams. Our behavior and life quantified.
The smart data collections are idiosyncratic and invaluable when computed upon. Industry experts like Mark D’Cunha, P. Eng argues “as sensors and wearables increase in popularity, the data you create and share will become an intrinsic part of your social personality or aura” therefore impacting our social relevancy.
By consequence sharing our data aura becomes the new selfie — as we maximizing self expression — If you are not wearing your data, you will struggle to be heard.
Why relevant to brands?
Unless you are living under a rock, you have figured that every major brand has a monetization process for all data streams. Finding intelligence and sources of revenue or innovation is an imperative.
The quantification of behavior is priceless as the level of detail captured has no precedence, and opens the possibilities of targeting moments of engagement, by reacting and reaching audiences at the right moments of interaction and in context. The possibilities of enhancing services and brand experiences informed by smart data. We go beyond apps, and marry both utility and behavior and context into a seamless brand experience. Where smart data enable brands to be empathic at distance.
Our affair with wearables and sensors allow brands to swift through billions of moments that are experienced daily with the vast collections of smart data that analyzed in real time — moment-based reward platforms like Kiip, target this moments of achievement through apps people use being those gaming moments, musical moments, shopping, fitness, productivity or even cooking just imagine the possibilities of smart data enhancing brand experiences by creating higher engagement rates with customers by interacting at the right moment, time, place and context.
Who owns the data?
That is a complete different concern and future thought exploration. Thus the many examples we see in our every day lives gives us a perspective of the expectations and interest behind it. Data Governance and Data Ethics and topics to explore. The observation is clear that great insight comes from great data analysis and sources. And it takes innovative and entrepreneurial brands to take action on insights instead of absolute business transformation paralysis. The smart data collected is ever expanding on its own digital universe all across our now ubiquitous digital footprint — the real landscape is enclosed inside our distributed infrastructure.
Key takeaways:
Does your brand or organization is ready to manage big data?
E.g. Infrastructure, Data Partners.
Does your brand or organization has the capacity for analyzing big data? E.g.Computational Resources
Does your brand or organization has the capacity to covert big data to smart data? New Product, Proprietary KPI’s or Proprietary IP Algorithms
Does your brand have smart data and business transformation strategy?
Are you a believer?, or suffer from brand paralysis to take action and create brand or organizational value.
