Our data is worth money

“Our data is worth money”, this is what Hans Neubert, chief Creative Officer in Frog, think about data collection related to wearable devices.

Most of the wearable devices, such as the Apple Watch or Microsoft Band, are not becoming a mass-market product and they are bought mostly by people that already knows what the device is gonna tell them. They are still mostly a form of personal expression that reflect users’ interests. People that are already healthy will use one kind of tracking devices only for few months to then give up on the device, according to a study by Endeavor Partners.
The main problem lies in the fact that is hard to get an emotional attachments to these objects , that are not becoming the “new piece of jewelry” that you will wear every day. This is problematic because the data collected are valuable and can generate great insights, only if gathered for a long period. We already know, and we don’t really care, how much sleep we get each day, but if we collect this data in a long-term and we compare them with data from other people, we, or better a behavioral scientist, can acquire insights about sleep habits.
What Neubert proposes is that brands should rethink their value proposition and their service offer, if they want that wearable devices will become a mass-market adoption and not just a passing trend for fanatics. So here it comes the value of our data: the production companies should consider the power of these data sets, provide the wearable device for free, and even pay the wearer to access his or her data. There is not altruism in this because in this way the devices will increase their functions and, as consequences, their market as professionals applications for doctors and researchers.
According to Neubert this is a shift that companies of wearable devices need to do in order to convince consumers to wear a product that, as it is now, lacks of emotional connection and doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know.
To know more:
Fastcodesign: why wearables should be free