Judging several categories of the CES Innovation Awards over the last three years has revealed five patterns we, at UPSTREAM, believe will impact the business of innovation for marketers, researchers and technologists in the near term:
1. QUANTIFIED SELF & M-HEALTHPersonal biometrics and digital enabled behavior analysis will increasingly let consumers discreetly track and manage their lives more effectively.
Financial professions, digital marketers and healthcare enterprises may have been the first to actively track and analyze behavioral-lifestyle data. However, as self tracking digital products, augmented apparel and online data tools enable advanced user analytics for individuals, personal metrics will become the next big thing.
Novel apps and devices will increasingly let consumers discreetly manage their health more productively. Self analysis tools have just begun to trickle into the market with technology like Fitbit and JawboneUP. Research company Technavio predicts that the global mobile health applications market will reach USD 4.1 billion by 2014, up from USD 1.7 billion in 2010.
You’ll see solutions for diagnosing, monitoring and treating a variety of illnesses – from obesity to asthma, from poor vision or hearing to high blood pressure. Seemingly disparate data points, work activity, commute, financial and calendar data will be compared to health behaviors to achieve new understanding of ones self. This data tracking will create new benefits for the individual. It will also intensify the data concerns and scrutiny if online and cloud services that support the system of personal data storage.
Need further proof? Apple’s App Store currently offers 9,000 mobile health apps (1,500 cardio apps, 1,300 diet apps, 1,000 stress and relaxation apps, and 650 women’s health apps). By mid-2012, this number is expected reach 13,000 (Source: MobiHealthNews, September 2011).
Collecting, sharing, tracking and optimization of oneself is a major trend for 2012. Look for this trend to extend into other sectors throughout the year.
SEEN AT CES:
Withings’ Blood Pressure Monitor plugs into an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch and takes the user’s blood pressure. Data can be sent directly to a doctor or published (confidentially) on the Web. Also look for their Wi-Fi enabled scales which can measure both weight and fat mass and upload the data to a web portal.
October 2011 saw US automotive company, Ford, demonstrate three apps offering in-car health monitoring. The sample apps use Ford’s SYNC Applink software to enable drivers to access certain mobile health apps while driving to keep track of chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma and hay fever.
AT&T announced in October that it will begin selling clothes embedded with health monitors, able to track the wearer’s vital signs (including heart rate and body temperature) and upload them to a dedicated website. According to AT&T, apart from its sports based applications, these biomonitoring clothes line will also be uniquely beneficial for a range of uses including fire fighters, policemen and even military personnel. Above all, the health tracking clothes are expected to greatly entice the interest of the senior citizens, where in they will have the freedom of wearing health monitors in a more fashionable way.
The B1 Basis Band is a watch-like wellness aid includes optical blood flow and galvanic skin sensors to track your pulse rate, calorie burnrate and sleep patterns.
Released in November 2011, Jawbone’s Up is a wristband personal tracking device that tracks a user’s moving, eating and sleeping patterns. The device syncs with an iPhone app, and users can set the device to vibrate when they have been inactive for a period, compete against friends and even earn real life rewards for completing activity challenges.
Look for this trend to continue as startup, Misfit Wearables, recently acquired funding to launch a wearable product focused on helping control a chronic condition by the end of 2012. Investors include John Sculley, CEO of Apple.
2. GESTURAL INTERFACES & AUGMENTED REALITYNew natural interfaces based on movement will allow more intuitive control of tech, increasing access to information and digital content.
Augmented reality may have become an attention getter in the marketing world in 2011, but new computer interfaces and augmented screens will reach a tipping point in 2012 as touchscreen and mobile sensing and accelerometer innovations go mainstream. New Natural User-Interfaces (NUI’s) allow more intuitive control of computer applications, manipulation of digital content and information. Bridged to local data and online content, these new interfaces use people’s movements and gestures to create a bridge between the real world and the digital world.
Progressive consumer electronics companies have realized the importance of making the products around us simpler to use, rather than blindly adding more features because they can. This trend is enhanced by the increased capabilities of natural interfaces to combine all theses new environmental elements of gesture, movements, location, voice-command, biometric response and soon, our moods and our thoughts.
In 2012 will see Near Field Communication (NFC mobile-wireless data transfer capability) becoming more prevalent in mobile products and will drive an exponential growth in mobile (hence personal) interactions. Early examples of NFC enabled gesture interactions will be mobile payment and information sharing through natural gestures (like the Bump contact sharing app).
This all leads to a new form of interaction that’s more intuitive, natural and easy for consumers to adopt. It changes the game of marketing content creation, customer interaction and creates opportunities for information providers and product technologists to ultimately make digital more “human”.
Easily maintain your desired comfort level in your home with this learning thermostat from NEST LABS that remembers your temperature adjustments and programs itself to build a personalized schedule based on your preferences. Its passive interface also knows when you are not home (via proximity sensors) and is intelligent enough to make the appropriate adjustments. Additional information is provided while it is being adjusted by their owners so as to give them real-time feedback about the energy usage implications of their selection and provides suggestions on how to save energy.
SoftKinetic develops gesture recognition hardware and software for interaction with digital entertainment, gaming, interactive digital signage, advergaming and physical therapy.
Their software can recognize various scenic elements, track user’s body; and adapt digital content to the user’s movements, and vice versa.
The next-generation of Microsoft’s Kinect is said to be so accurate it can read lips, voice pitch and facial characteristics (and complex finger movements and gestures) to determine what mood the player is in.
The Kinect platform has the potential to create new paradigms in the way that we interact with computers and communicate. Expect the Kinetic sensor technology to be incorporated into displays, TVs, ultrabooks and mobile phones as it becomes miniaturized.
It’s likely to be available in 2013, but look for an announcement at CES.
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