Confessions of a wearables user

I've had my Fitbit flex now for two months. And my usage is starting to drop off. When you first get something like this you want to try out all the features, to see what it can do. The way it's designed means you end up wearing it 24/7. There's progression (you can change your goals), and there's awards (daily and cumulative achievements). You can see graphs of how well/badly you slept. It's fun. But if there's one thing my long history of consumerism has thought me it's that novelty eventually wears off.

Unless you are actively using the device to monitor something, you realise there is little reason to wear it. If you aren't sleeping well, this can possibly help you identify reasons. If you are trying to up your fitness you can continually up your goals. But every so often it needs to be taken off. Sometimes it needs a quick wipe-down, more usually it needs charging. A time will come when you don't put it back on, and don't miss it.

In hindsight this should have been predictable. I wear my flex next to my watch. I only wear my watch when I go out. So I can check the time easily, so I'm not late meeting people, or catching my train. I use it when it has a function. When I'm at home, not doing much, why do I need a pedometer?

It's not just the flex. Usage falloff of wearables in general is about 30% in six months. 50% about 15 months. (Article; Why Wearables Aren't Working Yet.) And that seems right to me. I got beautiful new wireless headphones as a present recently. When using bluetooth they have a wonderful gesture interaction; press to play/pause, double-tap to skip forward/back, and twirl clockwise to increase volume, counter-clockwise to decrease volume. There's also a recorded voice advising you on how to pair the headphones over bluetooth, and alerting you when the battery gets low. They are very well thought-out and a joy to use. But they're just headphones, I only need them to listen to music.

The manufacturers of these really nice pieces of dedicated hardware do try to add extra value. The flex has a silent vibrating alarm. The headphones can be used to take phonecalls. But they're also lacking many features, so both need a smartphone or computer; to collect/generate and display. In one way it's creating this wonderful system, your own personal network. Defined about you, by you, for you and your needs. But it's all external and clunky.

I think the e-textile concept of melting the electronics into the fabric is the way to go. You won't put on a wrist-strap, you'll just put on your coat, or runners, or pjs, or other piece of dedicated clothing you already put on for specific activities. But that raises the interesting question of how they'll all interact with each other. Will they combine in a sort of personal-network to provide the seamless functionality of the 24/7 devices? Rather, will the concept of 24/7 monitoring need to be done away with? Or just extended into your environment as well?

But I suspect there will always be days, like sunny, lazy days by a lake, to leave gaps in the data.