So what we try to do is have the first baby instil in the parents the same level of confidence that they will have in the second or third child. Typically first parents are freaking out because the baby gets a really high fever.
Gadi Amit: For babies for instance we know that they start teething around half a year old. Marcus Fairs: What happens when the dog, or the baby gets sick? How do you stop the dog owner or the parent worrying too much? Currently this is the beginning of the process and eventually it will become a very effective way of creating research that is beyond anything you can do in a lab. Marcus Fairs: So it could help you to know if your dog's going to get sick, before it actually gets sick? Whistle is an activity monitor for dogs designed to track their daily exercise and health trends
DIGITALPERSONA HELP PROFESSIONAL
And it's really interesting how these wearables are becoming amazing open labs that feed data back to professional environments, medical environments, where they can do a lot of research. The interesting thing is that the company, Whistle, that collects all this data, analysed it with veterinarians, and with that mass of data started to see connections between certain mood swings in the dog and certain medical conditions. For instance, knowing whether your dog walker actually walked the dog enough, gave the dog enough play time, is something many dog owners want to do. So it's not only declaring that it's play time: it's the amount of running, the amount of jumping, the amount of wagging the tail and so on. We had a whole discussion about what constitutes the right play time. Gadi Amit: It's actually a very interesting story. Marcus Fairs: So how do you monitor a dog? What kind of data are you looking for? So we were actually trying to allow the other person - the owner for the dog or the parent for the baby - be connected to the state of mind or the state of health of the dog or the baby. When we are putting a device on a dog or a baby, the user - the dog or the baby - is not aware of it and are not so keen on having it. Gadi Amit: Typically when people buy something like Fitbit they are aware of their health and they are very much in control. Marcus Fairs: Fitbit monitors your physical activity, but tell us about the wearable devices for dogs and babies. The Sproutling device is a wearable baby monitor that records heart rate and breathing as well as the temperature of the room
Other than than in the past we've done the Lytro camera and we've been working a lot in the computer industry and the mobile industry. And we've done both the digital design and the product design for a new company called Sproutling. Gadi Amit: I've designed all the Fitbit products for the last six years, including some future ones that are coming, and a device called Whistle, which is a kind of Fitbit for dogs. Tell us some of the products you've designed. Marcus Fairs: You've designed a lot of wearable devices. I call it a technology design company now, because we're dealing with a whole bunch of digital issues and the physical manifestation of them. Gadi Amit: I'm the principal and owner of New Deal Design from San Francisco. It's a major error on the part of people who never thought about the social and emotional state of people."īelow is the transcript of the interview with Amit: They don't want to be exposed to the whole social web. He added: "Some of the issues we have with Google Glass for instance now in San Francisco, there were nearly fist fights over Google Glass coming into bars where people tend to be more intimate. And this actually where designers excel, rather than technologists." "It doesn't focus much on the EQ, on the emotional quality of the design and the technology. "I think the biggest problem with this industry is that it has focussed too much on IQ," he said.
The Fitbit Force is a health tracker that measures your activity and the quality of your sleepīut Amit, who designed the bestselling Fitbit activity tracking devices as well as several other wearables, also warned that the technology industry needed to pay more attention to the emotional needs of users in order to avoid conflicts such as the recent incident in San Francisco, where a woman was attacked for wearing Google Glass in a bar.