First there were the wearables, then along came a stranger from out of town who really made folks think differently…
Awareables – you’d be forgiven for thinking this is the latest Pixar offering – but of course it’s not. It’s far more exciting and if you’re anything like me, won’t have you nodding off in your chair with a bag of Haribo before the opening credits.
We all know about wearables – a year on from the Apple Watch launch and these little gadgets are almost old hat – doesn’t everyone have one? What’s there to get excited about now?
Fancy yourself as know-it-all?
Well it depends on how much you want to know… about your body that is. The latest technology aims to interact with us as well as monitor it. So much for measuring what we did, awareables tell us how we did. Knowing how many footsteps we took or how fast our heart is beating is all fine and dandy but we’ll soon be able to find out why we performed the way we did. We’re not talking a telling off here when your mid-week tipple slows down your 5k run the following morning. We’re talking devices that can let you into the little secrets of your biologic processes.
The technology’s been around for a while. Last year David Evans, the chief futurist at Cisco, outlined the way technology was advancing to eventually be able to fit inside the body. Intel’s Edison line of chips – a computing device the size of an SD card – and microchips the size of hair, were just some of the advances Evans highlighted. This level of shrinkage opens up new possibilities, one of which is moving on from just gathering data to letting us know how our brains and bodies are working, and why.
Sounds exciting, although I can’t help wondering if these devices have to potential to send a hypochondriac into meltdown. Joking aside, what they should offer is a greater understanding of our abilities and the limits of our bodies. And that has to be a good thing. As their name suggests they will allow us to become more aware and hopefully rectify the things we are doing that are holding us back from achieving full physical potential.
Dirty little secret
In a LinkedIn post Sean Brennan, principal at design consultancy Continuum, looked at these devices. He wrote:
“50% of people who use wearables stop after six months, and the industry sees this as a failure. One article called it “the dirty little secret” of wearables. But why expect these products to have a long lifespan? In some ethnographic interviews, people have said they learn what 10,000 steps feels like and simply don’t need the device as much anymore. That sounds like a success story.
“Wearables should be designed to make us more aware, not to make us wear them. We can use technology to force focus on a particular behaviour, help us reflect on patterns or triggers, and develop sensitivity to specific aspects of our lifestyles.”
Put it into context
Makes sense then that we have the next stage on. According to Evans it’s not just technology we need to make awareables work. He believes we need contact, connections and context. He uses the example of the Google prototype contact lens that detects glucose levels in tear ducts to highlight contact. Connection he explains as “making something dumb intelligent” such as attaching devices to the cloud instead of just a smart phone. And context? Understanding the way in which someone is working with a device and how its data alters because of that.
I find this fascinating – not just because it’s another development in the story of digital health but because it shows that the possibilities for technology and the human body are seemingly endless. It’s not so much a question of how much do you want to know but how soon can you find it out. And yes, way, way better than the storyline any animated feature film could dream up.
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