So, “wearables” really do seem like the next big thing to take over our lives, just bringing us that much closer to cyborg-dom. Because of my interest in running and fitness, I’ve found myself unwittingly at the forefront of this movement. Back in 2007, I adopted the Nike Plus running app along with their sensor shoe pod thingy because I was really getting into running regularly and was interested in keeping track of all my miles. A few years later the Nike+ app came out for the iPhone and the sensor for me became obsolete. Then, around 2010-11 ish the whole 10,000 steps a day and new digital pedometers were becoming all the rage, and soon I was reading posts from friends about their clip-on pedometers and whatnot. The name “FitBit” was getting bandied about quite a bit, but at the time I wasn’t really interested because the Nike+ app and I were doing just fine.
Then came all the articles about how horrible sitting all day was—even if you were to exercise an hour a day, it wouldn’t be enough to offset the damage by all the sitting. I began to realize that I needed to move more frequently throughout the day, and I was starting to become interested in quantifying all my incidental movements throughout the day. By this time there were quite a few fitness trackers on the market: Jawbone UP, FitBit, Nike Fuel Band, etc. A good friend of mine happened to have the FitBit Force and mentioned that it had a social aspect: you could make FitBit friends and there was this 7-Day leaderboard for some friendly competition. Plus, other friends had tried the Jawbone UP and had a lot of quality issues, so the FitBit seemed the best for my needs.
So I plunked down the $99 for a FitBit Flex, which is the smaller narrower one than the Force, and has only dots for the display, each dot indicating 20% of your daily goal. A standard goal is 10,000 steps, so every 2,000 steps I got a dot—woohoo! I’d actually wanted the Force, which was bigger but had a numbered display for time and steps. A product recall meant they weren’t available for sale when I wanted it, so the Flex it was. An advantage of the Flex was that I could change bands very easily, as the “brain” of the tracker was a little pod that slipped into the rubber wrist band. You also recharged the pod itself by clipping it into a proprietary USB charger. Set up was very easy, and the FitBit package, web site and app had a unified, appealing look.
While the FitBit Flex definitely did its job, I noticed certain things that started to bug me:
- It was really hard to clean the compartment that the pod went into in the wrist band. Since there is no way to “seal” the pod in the compartment, water and sweat can get in there, and after a while could get pretty rank, I’d imagine. I didn’t take that chance; I’d rinse it off after every run and wash it with soap every few days. Then I’d have to use a wadded up tissue to stuff into the compartment to soak up the water, which didn’t always work perfectly. Sometimes I’d take the pod out during the day and see that it had water drops on it (the pod is water resistant, but not waterproof). Since I was running almost every day, this became a tiresome daily chore.
- I was devoting valuable wrist real estate to something that had just one function. It couldn’t even tell time, which would’ve been pretty useful.
- The wrist bands seemed to wear out quite fast, especially with me having to take the pods in and out of it every day.
- The social aspect was fun, but lost its luster over time because it seemed like it was the same people and same info all the time.
Then a friend of mine (who used to be a FitBit friend) told me about the Pebble Smartwatch, which he’d been using for a few months. He switched over because he was interested in getting notifications on his watch (the new FitBits can do this now), and since he’s a web developer/designer he was interested in possibly creating third party apps for it. When I first saw his I was put off by how big and bulky they seemed compared to the FitBit (which definitely was thinner and less obtrusive on my wrist), but I realized that that would be the price I’d have to pay for more functionality. When Pebble announced a price drop from $149 to $99 for their plastic model, it seemed like a good time to try it and I bought one.
At first I thought the most important aspect of it would be the Misfit app, which does all the pedometer stuff, and of course, the time-telling part. But then I didn’t realize how much I’d come to like all its other capabilities that I’d only glossed over before:
- Music control: Now that I have bluetooth headphones for when I go running, I can use my watch to control volume and next/previous song. This has been a VERY useful function for me, and something that’s built in to the watch.
- Notifications: Basically any notification you get on your phone you can get on the Pebble. I’m really liking that I can read texts or see who’s calling without having to pull out my phone, especially if I’m on the go. You can’t reply on the phone, but it’s a good way to assess whether something’s urgent or not.
- 3rd party apps: custom watch faces (see the Totoro one I found below), timer apps, Misfit, Yelp, Evernote, and many more apps to make your watch the most useful for you. You can only have 6 apps installed at a time, but can have a bunch more in your “locker” in your Pebble app that you can upload/unload pretty easily.
Had I had the FitBit Force I might not have made the switch as readily, but a change to a smartwatch probably would have been inevitable for me. Now that I have the Pebble a lot of people ask me if I'm going to get the Apple watch (since I have an iPhone), and the answer is probably yes, but not right away. I'm not touching version 1.0 of that product, especially when the entry-level price is around $350. I think the Pebble will see me through for a while.
- Stephanie Han
Stephanie is a Senior Art Director at JDA Inc, a graphic design firm that specializes in supporting companies' branding and retail efforts with a Unified Marketing approach. To learn more, click here.
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