New wearable tech kid-on-the-block, Misfits Wearables, has just launched a very promising new wearable device called Misfit Shine and they have already raised over $500K on funding site indiegogo. The small and beautiful device strikes the balance between usefulness, elegance and price (you can pre-order one for under a hundred bucks). According to the Misfit team "We aim to pioneer the emerging world of wearables, by making products and services in the consumer health and fitness space to inspire people be more active and develop healthy habits." (source) This functional fashion statement does just that in a way that is elegantly integrated into your lifestyle. The device styling is a small rounded "pebble" that is meant to beautifully blend into your fashion statements. Couple it with an accessory to clip it anywhere on your body or wear it as a wristband in a way that is convenient and flexible to how you want to wear it.
The device interface is simple. Just tap it to get a summary of your activity displayed through a series of tiny led lights that gently illuminate the matte surface. Magical. And how do you make synching effortless? Simply touch it to your phone. No bluetooth, battery-consuming wi-fi, or bulky wires. Brilliant.
From an industrial design and device perspective, I have yet to see a health and fitness device that is as elegant and wearable as this one (sorry Jawbone Up!). On the software side, the app covers basic fitness tracking, but what about motivational features that "get me going", "keep me going", and inspire me to keep coming back? I'd love to see concepts that, for example, rely on friends to keep you going (social networking integration similar to what nikeplus does), goal tracking, or clever game mechanics to keep me coming back. Hopefully, we'll see concepts like this added to the next version. Fingers crossed!
Aside from some missing feature concepts with the software experience, I am very excited about this new product and can't wait to see what else Misfit has up their sleeves.
Watch Misfit Wearables CEO, Sonny Vu, talk about his new Misfit Shine:
For additional information, read more about Misfit Shine at Gizmodo and Forbes. Images from indiegogo.