A Minimalist Sports Technology Company
Technology that just gives you the what you need
A Minimalist Sports Technology Company All sports technology companies (e.g. Garmin) are moving towards products that provide more features than a single user could ever need. They can use their watch to track 100s of different sports, sleep, steps, floors climb, resting heart rate, stress, body battery, power, and loads more that I’m probably missing. They also have features outside of sport and health, like playing, getting notification from there phone and listening to music.
My argument is that people don’t necessarily require all this data and information being constantly tracked about them and constantly given to them. We often become obsessed with the numbers on our watches. I’ve got to have a rest day because my watch told me to, or I’m going to have a bad day because my sleep score was only 50 last night. We have moved away from the ability to listen to our bodies; instead, we have outsourced to our wearables. We have lost the ability to just enjoy moving and the skill of listening to our bodies.
On a more practical level as a user, it seems great that these products provide all these different features; it makes it seem like it’s worth spending the money on, but I would bet the average user only uses less than 10% of the 100s of features that the wearable provides. What this means is we are often left paying for features that we don’t need. Also, having biometrics constantly being tracked does raise privacy issues, especially in the world of big data. This is pure speculation from my point of view, but I wouldn’t be surprised if biometric data is/will be sold to AI companies looking for more data to train their models on.
Before I go into what my solutions for these issues are, I would like to lay out that this idea isn’t a direct competitor to the larger sports wearables companies but more of an alternative solution in this space. For people who don’t want a device strapped to their wrist providing them with what seems like an endless list of data points. People who just want to enjoy moving and not want to think too much about pace, distance or heart rate. There would be use cases where I would wear my Garmin purely as I require all of those features like when I’m running ultra races, but wearable I’m proposing I would wear for my daily runs where I don’t need all the data on that run.
The minimalist wearable company (the name is in the work) would create and build devices that provide the user with only the essential data points for running and walking mode, which would track current pace, distance, heart rate (unsure on this and would require an external HR monitor), and elapsed time. Then there would be a general activity mode for sports like gym or cycling; in this mode, it would only track elapsed time and heart rate.
The watch design would be as minimalist as possible, drawing inspiration from Casio’s G-Shock design. The initial version would feature a digital watch face, designed to be simple and user-friendly. The primary objective would be to keep costs low, so only the essential functionalities would be included, such as GPS, Bluetooth transmitter/receiver, memory storage for past activity, and a changing port. The battery life would be a key feature. We aim for a battery that can last weeks, not months, to minimise the need for frequent charging. The wearable device should almost be forgotten about when worn, reducing the constant worry about battery life. Optimising a watch for battery life, weight, cost, and size would be mean. It would have to use an external heart rate monitor, and not everyone wants or needs to know their heart rate while exercising. They know their bodies well enough.
Other products we could develop include a step tracker that resembles a simple bracelet or anklet. Unlike traditional step counters like Fitbit, this product wouldn’t have a screen. Instead, the step count would be broadcasted to an app. This solution addresses the issue where people find step counters, like Fitbit, unattractive, leading them to avoid wearing them. However, people often don’t carry their phones, missing out on valuable steps. The bracelet would feature an accelerometer, Bluetooth device, and a small battery. Notably, it wouldn’t require charging as the motion would generate power, similar to many watches available today.