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AWS Meetup June - Wearables
- 2. Wearables 1. What are they? 2. Why do they matter? 3. What next?
- 3. What are they? Health and fitness trackers
- 4. What are they? Virtual and Augmented Reality
- 5. What are they? General Purpose Devices or “smart watches”
- 6. Why do they matter? • More accessible • More data • More context
- 7. What next? • Keep an eye out for wearables news • Prepare your apps for wearables • Speak to Amazon and Terem about a workshop and prototype for your new or existing application
- 8. A quick example UBwell: A continuous real-time tracker of physiological and experiential data
Editor's Notes
- I’m here to talk to you about wearables. First I’d like to explain what I mean when I say “wearables”, what are they? Next I’ll spend some time explaining why I think wearables are important, right now, and why you should be paying attention to them. Finally, I’ll give some brief advice regarding what you should be doing next if this talk piques your interest.
- Fitness trackers! Health and fitness are one of the most obvious applications for wearables. A device that is located on your body is far more likely to be useful in that context than a device that is not. The most common function of these devices is to act as a high-tech pedometer, and to measure your sleep. Newer devices however, can also include sensors such as heart rate monitors, thermometers, GPS, and more. Fitness has been an easier target for these devices than health applications, but there are devices out (such as Microsoft Band) that contain galvanic skin response sensors. Jawbone’s UP3 band includes a similar sensor that additionally measures your respiration rate. Combining the data from various sensors can give near real-time medial insights, for example an increase in body temperature without an increase in heart rate could indicate the wearer is suffering from the onset of a fever. Heart rate fluctuations could also act as an early warning sign for heart trouble or other conditions. Upcoming devices go beyond current sensors with technology like microneedles. Microneedles on a wearable device is simply a patch of sandpaper-like material that penetrates the upper layer of skin and read various chemical levels from your skin cells, essentially acting as a very basic blood test. The health applications of wearables are in the early stages right now, but this is an area that will grow rapidly in years to come. Next: Health and fitness trackers are mostly worn on the wrist, but next I’ll talk to you about some wearables that have a very different purpose and create a far more personal experience.
- We have a whole other category of wearable devices that are more likely to sit on your face than your wrist, in this category we have virtual reality and augmented reality. Virtual reality is when a devices takes over your senses, immersing you in a digital experience. Augmented reality is when virtual reality is introduced to the real world, augmenting everyday experiences. We are now seeing a range of new devices that offer deeply immersive digital experiences, and I’m going to talk to you about one of them, the Oculus Rift. You can’t talk about this category of devices without referring to the Oculus Rift. Oculus VR, the company that created the Rift, was bought by Facebook last year for 2 billion dollars, and this is before Oculus had a consumer-ready product. Oculus has since announced a Q1 2016 release of their first consumer product, but there are tens of thousands of prototype devices that have been purchased by companies eager to develop virtual reality experiences, in preparation for a public release. The initial goal for the Rift was video games, but it has already been used as a way to experience movies in a more interactive way, to control drones, and to deliver immersive marketing material by the likes of Game of Thrones and NRMA. If you haven’t tried one on yet, Terem has one available that we can demo for you, we believe devices like the Oculus Rift will be commonplace in 2-3 years, and will be used to deliver video games, movies, and other highly immersive experiences.
- The last category of wearable devices I’m going to talk about today are general purpose, instead of doing one thing well, they’re more like a miniature version of your smartphone, and similarly come with a suite of built in apps, and have the ability to load more through their respective app stores. This is the category of devices that present the most exciting opportunities at the moment, and are the space to watch most closely as new products are released and updated. These devices are commonly known as smart watches, but they are no more watches than your smartphone is a phone. Let me take a moment to clarify what I mean by that. If you look at the history of computers, devices started off very large (the size of a room), and gradually became smaller. Once computers were small enough for a single user, and fit on a desk, we had the Personal Computer revolution which saw a rise in the purchase and usage of computers, the reduction in size and cost propelled the age of computers forward. What happened next? We had a very similar revolution that began with the release of the iPhone. All of a sudden we had the power of a computer from just a few years prior, which was small enough to put in your pocket, and carry around with you everywhere. This device, and other devices that followed, most notably running Android, continue to be called phones, yet the phone component is but one application out of about 20 that the device is pre-loaded with. Think about how you use your smartphone, the average user takes more photos than phone calls, and spends more time reading email and playing games than they do on phone calls. The smartphone is in fact not much of a phone, but rather it’s a continuation of the trends that made the personal computer (the PC) successful. They are small, general purpose computers, in a friendly and portable size. Let’s go back to the devices we’re talking about here, they are sold and described as watches, but the Apple Watch for example comes with 20 pre-loaded apps, and has thousands more available through the App Store. The category of devices we’re talking about, these general purpose wearables, may very well be the future of personal computing. Current devices already have the power of smartphones from just 3-4 years ago, it’s only a matter of time before they are powerful enough for most common computing tasks There are companies already working on wireless smartwatch peripherals such as a keyboard and screen, but regardless of whether that future happens, there are applications that are possible here and now, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about next.
- I firmly believe that computing devices will continue to get smaller, more personal, and more affordable. While I believe wearables may one day soon displace our mobile phones, they are not quite there yet, so I’d like to give you some other reasons for paying attention to wearables right now. More Accessible If we think about all the screens a user is exposed to in a given day, we have watches, phones, tablets, TV, and personal/work computers. The smaller a device is, the greater the likelihood that it is with a user at any given time, and this proximity increases the chances of successfully initiating contact. For most computer users, and I’m sure this is relevant to most of you here, your phone is the device most capable of getting your attention. It’s so good at getting your attention, that like me you probably find yourself having to remove notification access for apps that abuse that privilege. This mechanism for grabbing the user’s attention becomes even more prominent when you can reach them with a physical tap on the wrist! This is what’s most exciting about wearables today, notifications are more powerful and more accessible. It’s easy to get a user’s attention, and provide them with some quick and easy options for interacting with your application. What used to require taking out your phone, unlocking it, and then choosing an action, is now simply raising your wrist, and tapping a single button. As it becomes easier to get a user’s attention, it becomes even more important to respect users by not flooding them with spammy, repetitive notifications, and to instead focus on relevant and contextually sensitive prompts that add value. More Data If your application has any relevance to health and fitness, there is additional information now tracked that was previously out of reach. This is not relevant to everyone, but the health and health research implications here are huge, and something we’re very excited about. An Apple Watch for example constantly feeds heart rate data, step counts, and a couple of other related metrics into HealthKit on iOS, making it easy for 3rd party applications to request access to this data and create interesting applications around the gathered metrics. More Context The way with which your users interact with your mobile application says a lot about them, and results in valuable data that can be collected and analysed. If you do not prepare your apps for wearables, your users may already be interacting with your app (via notifications) on a wearables device, giving you no insight into their usage patterns, and preventing you from tailoring their experience to the platforms they are using it on.
- I hope by now you’ve caught a bit of the excitement I feel about the future of computing devices in the form of wearables. Wearables are just getting started, and now is the time to get on board and tailor your applications for the future of computing devices. If nothing else, I hope that after today you’ll be paying more attention to news about wearable devices in the various categories I mentioned earlier: health and fitness, augmented and virtual reality, and general purpose wearables. Some additional things you can do is tailor your mobile applications for wearables, at the very least utilizing the interactive notifications features available to iOS and Android developers. This alone will help you minimize the interaction a user needs to interact with your application in a meaningful way when a notification is presented to them. Beyond this, it’s actually quite straightforward to build an Android Wear and/or Apple Watch extension for your existing application, in both cases the technology used is very similar to the corresponding OS. If you believe wearables can make a different to your product or service, please approach myself or an AWS representative after this talk and we’ll be glad to arrange a workshop to help you develop a viable solution utilizing the latest wearable technology.
- In conclusion I would like to spend 2 minutes showing you an application that we’ve developed at Terem Technologies that is built on top of wearables. Terem, in conjunction with the Brain and Mind Research Institute at University of Sydney developed UBWell: a continuous real-time tracker or physiological and experiential data. An early version of UBWell is available via the App Store and Google Play. The app integrates with Apple’s HealthKit, as well as the FitBit and Google Fit APIs to help users stay across their physical well-being. In addition to the data we automatically gather, users are presented with a survey to fill out throughout the day to monitor metrics such as mood and energy levels. In addition to the mobile app we’ve built, we’ve developed an Apple Watch app to allow for filling out the survey directly from your wrist, with just a few taps. You can see some screenshots on the screen, and I’d be happy to show you the app in action on an Apple Watch if you approach me after this talk.