Wearable technology is often promised to make us move more, run faster and sleep better. There’s no doubt that it’s becoming increasingly popular, especially with the rise of IoT and interconnectedness between devices.
As a tech company, we were curious to discover… does our team actually wear any?
First things first – what is wearable tech?
As the name suggests, wearable technology are electronic devices you can wear. It is commonly worn as an accessory, although believe it or not, there’s some that can be implanted in the human body!
Wearable devices can be something as simple as a wristband that tracks various statistics during exercise, to eyewear, clothing and the more complex, all-in-one smartwatch.
But how does it actually work?
Wearable tech devices normally contain smart sensors. These sensors can track motion, as well as brain, heart and muscle activity.
Apart from sensors, some wearable devices also contain miniature computers, just like a smartphone. Both these elements are also connected to the internet to enable the exchange of data.
So, do our team actually wear any?
We created a quick survey to ask the important questions!
We found that 4 out of 12 team members who completed the survey said that they wear wearable tech. The tech they wear shared one big similarity: it’s worn on the wrist. We had 2 Apple watches, 1 Fitbit and 1 Samsung gear S3 frontier.
3 out of 4 members wore their tech every day.
Wellness, or exercise, was the dominant theme amongst the most used features, with 3 out of 4 using their tech to track activity levels. Other uses included answering calls and viewing message and calendar notifications.
All agreed that wearable tech has improved their daily life!
One team member said that wearable tech made them notice how little they moved during the day, and that it has encouraged them to be more active. Another said “health and fitness wise, it has provided a benchmark for me to track my progress against.”
Interestingly, one said they don’t need to carry their phone.
Those team members who don’t wear any wearable tech, had a mixture of reasons for not doing so. Cost and tech overload was one reason, while some didn’t feel it was a necessary gadget, or even liked wearing gadgets. A common and surprisingly simple response was that no one had bought it for them yet.
One to put on the Christmas list maybe?