FITNESS TRACKER
User Experience Extending
Digital Branding & strategy mengqian song personal project
OVERVIEW
Wearable Techonology/Fitness Tracker
As wearable products are becoming the top trend of digital media since 2014, it continues to remain one of the buzziest technology topics. As consumers are seeking for portable devices to explore their surroundings, marketers explain how the wearable product beneficial to people’s everyday life. Wearable technology gives retailers huge business opportunities to develop a wearable product that combine multi-functions together.
Average $100 hi-tech wristbands tells us the workings of our own bodies more than we know: it fills the role of your fitness coach, personal nutritionist and connects you to your friends by sharing tracking data together.
Fitness trackers unsurprisingly take up a big part of this potential market. According to NPD data, fitness trackers are more mainstream than other wearable technology products. “Over the holidays, more than 2.5 million digital fitness devices were sold, that compares with only 250,000 smartwatches.” There’s also a comparison between the average incomes of each device’s users: “41% of fitness tracker owners have an average income of more than $100,000, while nearly half of smartwatch owners earn less than $45,000” (NPD).
Jawbone wristband UP3 Jawbone UP3 a rubbery-feeling wristband that built on an advanced multi-sensor platform that includes a newly designed tri-axis accelerometer, bio impedance sensors, as well as skin and ambient temperature sensors. It tracks users’ everyday activities such as steps taken, distance travelled, calories burned, floors climbed and active minutes. Comparing to other fitness tracker, Jawbone UP3 has an advanced automatic sport detection skills. Its Smart Coach system, the more you use your UP3, the better the Smart Coach will understand you, is a real time information system that analyses users’ data. Jawbone uses its embedded sensor to provide a resting heart rate which to measure your overall heart health. There is also sleep monitoring feature to track users’ sleep patterns, along with a vibration-based silent alarm to wake you up as well. (wearable.com) From Jawbone’s tracking system, we know each user’s height, weight, sleep pattern, daily activities and diet information. Those are all valuable consumer insights to boost sales on related products, such as nutritional supplies and athletic apparel and accessories, or even dating websites.
The UP is a mobile app that displays all the tracking data on your device. The UP app also serves as a mini social network, since it let you team up with friends to compare progress and motivate each other (gizmag.com).
Athletic Apparel and Accessories The idea to match up the athletic gears with fitness trackers is based on the users’ records of daily activities. Take Jawbone UP3 as an example, by learning to recognize and automatically log all users’ activities from running to a pickup game of basketball, it becomes smart enough to capture what user’s favorite activities are and the trend of the daily exercises. Whether users want to get fit by a regular routine or lose weight for some big events, it could match up gears that best suit the users, to enhance the best exercising quality in result. I choose to partner with Adidas because it has long history of designer collaboration with many brands. Adidas’s creative ecosystem always leaves consumers a kind of engaging and high fashion images. We want to give back those owners of fitness trackers very lifestyle sportswear, and a much more of combination of fashion and digital elements. we want customers save time in scanning thousands of athletic gear, even sizes are suggested since Jawbone records height and weight information from every user.
STATISTICS
Based on the Mintel Report, the usage of fitness trackers have increased tremendously in recent years, mainly among younger exercisers aged 18 to 34. That’s the same target base, which wearable technology fashion are aiming for. The consumer research shows that “there are already demands for this in the fashion accessories sector, and approximately 16% of 1634s are motivated to purchase items such as handbags and costume jewelry if the product is innovative” (Mintel).
So given young people’s interest in both designer collaborations and the latest innovation, there is potential for a linkup between fashion retailers and a wearable technology.
Plus, there is scope for this to be extended to the clothing sector: “as approximately 20% of men and 19% of women aged 16-35 are willing to pay more for a special item of clothing” (Mintel).
Nutritional supplement Jawbone owns a diet measurement feature. When users log their meals everyday, Jawbone will track users’ calories eaten and obtain information on dietary intake, such as fiber, fat, protein, sugar, sodium, etc. In addition to the food scores, Jawbone provides suggestions for nutrition choices to reach users’ daily goal. I suggest: by showing the tips and recipe, Jawbone should pair them with actual nutrient products with nutritional advices on how to combine supplements with exercises to balance a healthy lifestyle. Except nutritional supplements, Jawbone also tracks users’ sleeping pattern and heart rate. The information Jawbone provides could also be a source for medication retail, such as hypnotics or heart medicine.
Based on the Mintel, “among 2,000 internet users aged 18+, 43% of the respondents would like to use a tracking device, such as Nike Fuelband or Fitbit to manage their health.” Another reports shows that “10% of the 2, 000 respondents have used Fitness/activity planner or log in the past 12 months to help them manage their health” (Mintel).
The picture on right: In order to improve the consumer experiences, Jawbone could replace traditional manually typing to barcode scanning, which would speed up the food logging process.
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Dating Website Fitness tracker should not be just limited to all things digital, but most importantly, to engage human-human interaction. Jawbone owns the team up feature and allows users to join one another in tracking and exploring their data. Currently, there are several search option allowing users to add team members (Jawbone.com): Contacts: Search for anyone in both your device contact list and the UP community. Facebook or Twitter: Finds friends you follow on Facebook or Twitter who are also using UP. Nearby: Let the app find others in the UP community who are within range of your location. Search: Search for friends by typing a name or email address into the search bar at the top of the Add Teammates screen.
Dating Website Suggestion: we will add one more option “matching”, which would partner with match.com. How does it work? Jawbone will help look for potential matches based on one’s diet habits, daily activities, and even sleeping patterns. It filters out less quality dates and helps those who are looking for lifestyle matching. When you find a match you want to invite to your team, Jawbone will send an invitation. After the person has been added to your team, the tracking data from both sides will be displayed on each other’s feeds. Only the data you want to share publicly will be shared. Even though it is a long distance relationship, you can always track other’s activity updates every minute. It gives an authentic experience on real time dating. Also, you can set a goal with your partner together and compare with progress and motivate with each other. It enhances the interaction from accomplishing something together, instead of communicating with pale text messages.
Even more interesting, users could send out a vibrate signal to your match less than five times a day to express your feeling, such as the message “thinking about you”. Since Jawbone could also track the mood from users, your match could send out greetings from their UP app to you. Except the sun/moon status light that Jawbone uses to indicate the activate state from users, we could add a customized signal option for users to deliver messages on the wristband. Imaging how cool that will be!
Citations: • Mintel. “Making wearable technology fashionable.” Jan. 2014. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from Mintel Reports database. • Mintel. “Wearable fitness technology to impact fitness centres.” Mar. 2014. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from Mintel Reports database. • Mintel. “Exercise Trends in US.” Oct. 2014. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from Mintel Reports database. • Mintel. “Attitude toward healthy food-US.” Oct. 2014. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from Mintel Reports database. • Mintel. “Managing your health.” Oct. 2014. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from Mintel Reports database. • NPD. “The Demographic Divide: Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches Attracting Very Different Segments of the Market, According to The NPD Group” Jan 06, 2015. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from NPD Group database. • NPD. “The Demographic Divide: Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches Attracting Very Different Segments of the Market, According to The NPD Group” Jan 06, 2015. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from NPD Group database.
• Krystina Gustafson. “Smartwatch or Fitness Tracker? Why Age and Sex Matter.” TODAY. N.p., 07 Jan. 2015. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. <http://www.today.com/money/smartwatch-orfitness-tracker-why-age-sex-matter-1D80410946>. • Jawbone Group. “Teammates & Sharing.” Teammates & Sharing. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. <https://jawbone. com/kb/articles/UPteammatesiOS.html>. • Will Shanklin. “Review: Jawbone Up24 Fitness Band.” Review: Jawbone Up24 Fitness Band. N.p., 05 June 2014. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. <http://www.gizmag.com/jawbone-up24-review/32424/>. • Paul Lamkin. “Jawbone UP3 v Fitbit Charge HR: The Best Activity Wearable for 2015.” Wareable. N.p., 20 Nov. 2014. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. <http://www.wareable.com/jawbone/ jawbone-up3-v-fitbit-charge-hr-best-fitness-tracker-2015>. • ROBIN MELLERY PRATT. “Why Are Sportswear Giants Nike and Adidas Embracing Fashion?” Businessoffashion. Bof, 21 Jan. 2015. Web. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessoffashion. com%2F2015%2F01%2Fnike-adidas-sportswear-fashion. html>.