The Uncommon Use of Common Wearables
As a James Bond movie enthusiast, I was always waiting for the part of the movie when James Bond is presented with his new "toys", especially the suit, pen, and watch that always had gadgets that were literally "life saving".
If you look back to what James Bond gets, a lot of these gadgets are what we call today "Wearables" and the possibilities they can in the future offering everyone but of course, always with a bit more for 007 himself.
Wearable Technology, or in short wearables, is technology that can be worn on the body, either as an accessory or part of material used in clothing and providing the ability to exchange data with other devices, network or the internet. Usually the word "smart" is added to a wearable technology that is connected to the internet.
Wearables include smart watches, smart glasses, smart clothing, body sensors, smart cameras, etc... Wearables can have consumer oriented use but also commercial and industrial use.
As I mentioned in a previous blog, wearables will in the future become your personal advisor, providing you real time information about yourself, your surrounding and offering you support and warning when required.
However, we don't have to look that far to see the penetration and impact wearables have on our lives.
According to market research, the wearable market had an increase of more than 100% year on year since 2014 and recently Apple Watch outperformed smartphone device vendors in penetration to the digital consumer.
There is plenty of information and articles out there of what today's use cases for wearables are, both for individuals and enterprises. From fitness measurements using smart watches and body sensors to real time remote support for engineers to service products at customer sites using smart glasses.
In this blog, I would like to share with you some of my provocative ideas about how, by combining different basic data from today's wearable technology with other data, you can create new digital use cases for wearable that would be beneficial to both individual digital consumers as well as the digital enterprise as a whole:
1- Improve your digital stress level: Most of Smart watches, fitness bands, capture heart rate on a continuous basis. But instead of reading the data with the physical activity you are doing, why not combine the data with with the mental activity being done at different intervals and this will give you as a digital consumer (as a customer or employee) your stress level and/or effort during that activity. This data can be used by the digital consumer to understand themselves and what triggers their high or low heart rate and improve or keep on doing. In addition, the enterprise can use such data to understand how their digital interaction & channels has an impact on their customers or employees.
2- Enhanced Customer Service: Today, in 90% of the cases, you call/chat/email customer service when you have a failed digital interaction and you want help. The experience usually depends on two items: The Outcome as well as the emotional and physical effort it took to achieve the outcome from both the customer and the agent. The outcome and the time taken is currently captured. However, what is missing is the capture of the emotional and physical efforts. These can be deduced using data from data from body sensors of the digital consumers and agents. You can even take it one step further and capture the agents interactions using a wearable camera (e.g. Police interceptor data)
3- Real-time Shopping experience from home: Imagine you can sit at home, and on your TV you can watch real-time or on demand the shopping experience of your online grocery order you did and even choose to change one or the other item as they didn't seem to your satisfaction. Even imagine you want your grocery order to include specific items depending on the calories you burnt. This can be done already now with wearable cameras on store clerks as well as combining calorie data with order data. So no run no muffin!
Now the question is how to get such data:
As an individual, you have access to both data and you simply need to map them together. Spreadsheet is and can do that easily for you.
As for enterprise, start with asking in your feedback channels and surveys if consumers are willing to share that data with you. Today there is not a simple way to anonymously take that data real time, but I am sure this will come in near future. (Of course, some concent will be required but lets admit it, what the digital consumer today has consented to within the terms & conditions of all connected technology today is way more complex than wearables data).
In the next 100 days, try to identify your own provocative use cases that could either suit you as an individual or as an enterprise and combine the data for a better outcome. You will be amazed of what you can achieve that you might have thought it is not yet possible to capture.