Were you rudely woken up early by your alarm this Monday?
If you’re reading this from the UK, where we had a public holiday, you might have forgotten to turn off your alarm and had your lie in cut short.
Our smartphones today have more power than the computers that took the first man to the moon – but they’re not clever enough to know the weekend lasted a day longer.
‘Smart’ technology isn’t smart, it’s ‘willing’. As long as you tell it what to do it’ll keep on doing it. Somehow we’ve ended up in a situation with the more gadgets we accumulate the more time we spend having to fix them around our lives.
Isn’t tech meant to make life easier?
Design your life better
Enter Kate Unsworth, a pioneer of the explosively popular mindfulness movement.
In our fast-paced, screen-addicted lives, we fill every spare moment with digital distractions and like many other millennials Unsworth’s grown up surrounded by mobile phones, social media and the tide of email that never seems to slow down.
To tackle this growing problem, she created Vinaya, a design and research studio with a mission is to find a space where technology can co-exist with us and complement our lives, rather than leave us feeling overwhelmed.
Altruis, her first product (pictured above), is an elegant piece of connected jewellery designed to put you back in control of your phone’s notifications that launched earlier last year.
Next generation wearable
Today Unsworth unveils her latest creation, Zenta, a bold step forward for the world of wearable technology.
“Technologists are finally realising it’s their responsibility to design products that seamlessly integrate into people’s lives, because today, we demand connectivity, but minus the distraction” explains Unsworth.
This new device is the product of a ground-breaking partnership between Vinaya’s design and research teams. By bringing together the latest academic knowledge on stress with a leading technical team, the group were able to create a product that for the first time understands how your body reacts to different everyday situations.
Zenta uses sensors that are now commonly found in wearables like the Apple Watch and more specialist devices for fitness fans.
These devices can already measure vital statistics like your heart rate, body temperature and how many steps you have taken that day.
But Zenta takes this further than any wearable we’ve seen before, by for the first time adding personal context to your data.
This wearable knows when you’re busy
Zenta’s app will ask you to supplement the data it collects with your own subjective points – allowing it to build a better picture of your own happiness, stress, activity and productivity levels.
In other words, this wearable helps you to better understand yourself and design a better life.
We took an early look at Zenta at Vinaya’s studios in London. The product is available in black or white with leather or sports straps and is Vinaya’s first product that’s suitable for both men and women.
Hardware is just one small part of this product. When Unsworth revealed the software abilities behind this new device, we were blown away.
Take this example – many of us pack our mornings with back-to-back meetings, racing from one to the other while checking emails and taking calls. You might feel like you’re being productive – but have you ever wondered what the impact is on your performance later in the afternoon?
With Zenta, your biometric data (heart rate, blood oxygen etc), along with your calendar appointments, volume of email and your subjective feelings (how stressed/overwhelmed you feel) would be pooled together for the first time.
This gives you an accurate picture of how this affects not only your morning but also the inevitable lag in the afternoon.
Understanding when it’s love
Zenta is about more than just productivity at work. Unsworth and her team have also created features that help us to better understand the first time we fall in love with that special someone.
“Our perception, as well as a hefty amount of societal norms and distractions, often clouds our self-awareness. We might interpret nervousness instead of love; anxiety instead of fear; self-doubt instead of envy.”
Starting today, Zenta is available for early pre-order on Indiegogo for $119. Once the product is launched later in the year, the price will rise to $249. This pitches it at $100 less than the Apple Watch.
Can a wearable device make a positive impact on your emotional wellbeing? It will take time for Zenta is understand human behaviour, but we certainly hope it can live up to its promises.
This is early days, but developments like Zenta could see wearables finally move from irritating nuisance to something that understands us.
Maybe we’re one step closer to the day when our gadgets knows when to let us have a lie in.
The post This wearable wants to start a ‘happiness revolution’ appeared first on The Memo.