What Contributes to Wearables Success?

 This post in Gigaom posits three factors --

1. habit formation -- helps the wearer develop and persist wit new habits,
2. social motivation -- the rationale behind the popularity of social media, and 
3. goal reinforcement -- helps the wearer achieve defined goals -- 

underlying the ultimate success of a wearable. This categorization, of course, ignores the seeming success of a prominent category of wearable: smartwatches. I don't lean on my Pebble because it trucks with the three factors. Rather (apart from telling the time), it frees me from having to look at my smartphone to see who's calling or texting or what email is coming in. 

The three critical factors wearable devices need to succeed

by Michael Davies, Endeavour Partners  

SUMMARY: Wearables may be the tech du jour, but the next generation of devices and services needs to focus more on keeping users engaged in the long-term. These three factors, based on behavioral science, can help them do just that.

At least 10 new wearable devices were introduced at CES in January, from makers such as Sony, Pebble, Meta, LG, Garmin, Razer and more. Yet despite the enthusiasm in the market, the dirty secret of wearables remains: almost all of the current generation of products fail to drive long-term, sustained engagement and behavior change.

Endeavour Partners’ research recently found that while one in 10 US consumers over the age of 18 now owns a modern activity tracker, one-third of US consumers who have owned a wearable product stopped using it within six months, and more than half of US consumers who owned an activity tracker no longer use it. Consumers are buying them and trying them, but rarely end up relying on them.

Post continues at link.