Consumer Products Blog
Consumers showing growing appetite for health and wellness devices
By Rachel Harker - Last updated: Wednesday, July 13, 2011A recent research report from IBM shows consumers are looking for information to help them lead healthier lives, and says that the corresponding market for devices that do this is relatively untapped. This trend explains why a slew of consumer product companies are looking to launch ‘health and wellness’ devices in the near future.
As developers of the world’s first personal activity monitor for Unilever’s Milife, and experts in developing both consumer products and medical technology we are often the first port of call for companies looking to learn about the space and develop new consumer health and wellness products. Through these interactions we’ve picked up on some of the common issues that new entrants are grappling with.
Right now, the most obvious and easy to access market is for sports and fitness devices. Gadget loving ABC1s pounding the streets for their first marathon or getting into the new craze for triathlon are absolutely ripe for spending money on whiz-bang new devices, something that the likes of Adidas, Garmin, Nike, Polar, Suunto and the rest have known for a long time. And there is the rub, because between them they have cornered the market with devices that tell you how hard you’re working, how fast you’re going and how far you have gone. How does a new entrant differentiate?
A common reaction is, ‘Let’s outscience them’. Unless the firm in question is an expert in the field of sports medicine, this route has a low probability of success. The incumbents have been in-bed with sports scientists and physiologists for years. They have access to, and understand the latest scientific findings, and unless the new entrant has access to a rare nugget of new research, they are unlikely to have the advantage.
In a similar vein is, ‘Hey no-one is using that great new bio-sensor yet’. There is a fundamental difference between technology that gets results in a lab or clinical setting and that which can be used in low cost, low power, high-volume consumer products that need to be extremely robust for sports activities. There are reasons why 3-D accelerometers are so popular in health and wellness applications right now: they are very cheap and highly reliable, thanks to use by the car industry in airbag crash detectors. Assuming they are operating in a world with the same economic constraints and laws of physics as the competition, firms probably want to apply accelerometers, GPS and HRM just like everyone else. That’s not to say that exciting new bio-sensors won’t come through, it’s just that right now they are insufficiently developed and don’t meet the cost targets.
So, should new entrants just give up and go home? No, but they should probably stop obsessing about the sensors, and instead think about how better to use what is readily available and look to offer a better user experience.
Better use of regular sensors
Think algorithms. There’s plenty of scope for extending the functionality of low-cost, low-power sensors with clever and efficient algorithms. The power of maths to extract good information from weak signals with lots of noise is hugely underestimated. Not to mention the potential when you consider combining data from multiple sensors.
User experience
Many existing products are targeting pretty serious athletes (or ambitious amateurs at least) with products which require a reasonably scientific mind. There is still plenty of opportunity to target the greater majority of Fallen Angels for whom ease of use and motivational power are far more important. This is where the potential for connected health and wellness devices comes in. There is growing evidence that peer motivation and community is hugely important in getting people to change their behaviour. I was reminded of this last week when I went to support friends running in the Cambridge Race for Life - 7,000 women of all shapes, sizes and fitness levels, coming together, dressed in pink to complete 5km is a powerful lesson about the motivational power of the sisterhood and a cause (Cancer Research). Companies that focus on how they can connect product users to really compelling communities could clean up, and possibly with very simple hardware.
Paul Williamson Said,
August 22, 2011 @ 11:48 am
Great post Rachel. I agree that the core sensing technology is probably not the place to start. User experience seems to be the winning formula. The challenge is how to add value to that basic sensor. Endomondo is a great example, take existing sensors and technology and add convenience and community.
As technologies like Bluetooth low energy bring smartphone connectivity to these kind of sensors there is huge scope for innovation by creating engaging experiences. Look at what flipboard can do with existing media content on the iPad. Who will emerge to make consumer’s fitness data engaging?