News: a wristband designed by Yves Behar for San Francisco electronics brand Jawbone that monitors how you move, sleep and eat has now launched in Europe, just over a year after its initial launch was plagued by technical problems.
Available from Jawbone's website and in Apple stores, the flexible UP wristband collects data on the user's activity round the clock. It then delivers information and tips on how to improve the results through a smartphone app, which has now launched on Android as well as iOS.
Travis Bogard, Jawbone's head of product management and strategy, told Dezeen how extensive user-testing had helped to improve the design after an initial batch was withdrawn due to problems with water resistance and reliability.
"There were issues where the batteries were not holding charge after about a week for some people," he said. "We've gone back to the drawing board and re-designed it from the ground up."
Bogard said the product was designed to be something people would forget they are wearing. "Think about something like a watch: most people won't wear their watch to sleep," he said. "It's too bulky and uncomfortable. With UP we're trying to build something you'll wear throughout the day and throughout the night. Size is a very important enabler of that, as well as flexibility and comfort. Basically it needs to disappear."
Motion-sensing technology works out how active the wearer has been and vibrates to remind them to get up and move about after a period of inactivity. At night the wristband tracks how long and how deeply they've slept.
Wearers can also take photos of their food or scan barcodes to enter information about their nutritional intake, and tell the app how they're feeling in order to work out how their sleep, movements and eating affect their mood.
The key feature of Jawbone's wristband is that it learns about the wearer over time, Bogard said. "It will help you understand yourself better. It helps you understand what was going on with your sleep, your food, how you compare to other people."
The development of the wristband reflects Jawbone creative director Yves Behar's belief that creating hardware and software at the same time is design's "new frontier", as he told an audience at London Design Festival last year.
UP is one of a number of wearable devices to come onto the market over the past couple of years, alongside Nike's activity-tracking Fuelband and the forthcoming Google Glass headset.
John Hanke, head of Google Maps, predicted the future of wearable computing in a recent interview with Dezeen, saying: "People are working on skin sensors and other ways of transmitting information to us in a way that's passive and that doesn't require us to divert our attention."
We previously reported on the Jambox wireless speaker by Jawbone – watch an interview about it that we filmed with company founder Yves Behar in Milan, or see all design by Jawbone.
Here's more information from Jawbone:
Jawbone® today announced European availability and a new AndroidTM application for UPTM, its revolutionary wristband and app system that helps you learn things about yourself and your lifestyle that you never knew. UP fits effortlessly into the way you live to help you understand how you sleep, move, eat and feel, and how those activities affect one another. It delivers useful and engaging information through a smartphone application that generates personalised insights to help you make meaning of the data and achieve your goals.
"We are excited to expand the UP community by introducing support for Android, 11 new languages for iOS, and product availability in more than 25 additional countries around the world," said Travis Bogard, Jawbone vice president of product management and strategy. "Everyone wants to improve upon themselves; we’ve found this to be a fundamental human desire, no matter where a person is starting from or what they want to achieve. Today marks a big step toward our commitment to help people establish a basis for behavior change by bringing UP to everyone who wants to live better lives."
UP Gives You a Rich Picture of Yourself
UP utilises sensors in the wristband, the powerful phone in your pocket, and data in the cloud to deliver a narrative of your daily life:
- Sleep: UP employs a revolutionary sleep tracking system. Sophisticated motion-sensing technology tracks micro-movements of your wrist to deliver unprecedented detail including how long it took you to fall asleep, how much light vs. deep sleep you got, how long you were in bed and how many times you woke up during the night. By using the new Power Nap feature or setting the silent Smart Alarm, UP wakes you at the most optimal point in your sleep cycle so you wake up feeling refreshed and alert.
- Move: UP gives you comprehensive information about how you move throughout the day, including active vs. idle time, intensity of movement, total steps, distance, and calories burned. UP also vibrates gently to remind you to get up and move when you’ve been inactive for a specified amount of time.
- Eat: UP helps you understand more about your food choices. Simply take a photo of your food to create a visual journal, or go deeper by scanning a barcode or searching the database for more complete nutritional information.
- Mood: UP lets you keep track of how you feel throughout the day so you can correlate how your sleep, movement and eating affect your mood.
- Insights: UP analyzes your data to deliver highly personalised insights. It reveals connections between different elements of your life, shows how you compare to others, and educates with new information that’s tailored for you. The more you use UP, the more powerful the insights will become.
UP is Designed for the Way You Live
UP is a sophisticated computer wrapped comfortably around your wrist and built to withstand everyday life. Encased in a smooth, hypoallergenic, medical-grade rubber, UP is shower- and splash-resistant so that you can wear it all day and night. With up to ten days of battery life you rarely have to take it off to charge.
"The UP band is powered by the patented MotionX® engine which encapsulates years of technology development and innovation on the biomechanics of natural human motion. The accuracy and power efficiency of MotionX has been critical in enabling UP to deliver a 24/7 product experience," said Philippe Kahn, CEO and founder of Fullpower, developer of the MotionX technology.
Available Beginning March 20
The UP band comes in three sizes (Small, Medium, and Large) and eight colours (Onyx, Mint Green, Light Grey, Blue, Navy Blue, Red, Orange, Hunter Green), and will be available at Jawbone.com and Apple Stores in Europe beginning today. Apple Stores in Asia and Australia will begin carrying UP next month, along with other retail locations in Europe, Asia, Australia, and The Middle East. Visit Jawbone.com/retail-partners for the most up-to-date availability.
The UP by Jawbone App for Android is available today as a free download on Google PlayTM. Jawbone’s iOS app, UP by Jawbone 2.4, is available today in 11 languages as a free download from the App Store. The UP wristband is required for the app.