I attended the Future of Wearable Tech event last week where Owen Thomas, editor-in-chief of the ReadWrite, interviewed Eric Migicovsky, Founder/CEO of Pebble. One third of the audience had a chance to show their support for Pebble when Thomas asked them to shake their wrists in the dark so their backlights would light up. I felt as if I was in the middle of a live concert. Among the audience were developers, wearable advocates, and representatives from bigger companies like Accenture. It was exciting to see the interest in wearables. The event also gave me a sense of what our future may look like with regards to wearables.
The Story of Pebble
In 2008, Migicovsky and his team started building their first smartwatch out of Waterloo, Ontario. They designed the InPulse smartwatch exclusively for BlackBerry. At the time, Migicovsky’s research showed that BlackBerry was the major player in the smartphone market (not to mention that Waterloo is the home of BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion). However, in 2011, Migicovsky’s team saw people shifting to iPhones and decided to create the Pebble smartwatch that worked with the iPhone. It was interesting to hear an example of how quickly tech gadgets go out of fashion, but at the same time, it is exciting that new players can also enter the market as Pebble did through a Kickstarter campaign about two years ago.
Quick statistics about Pebble today:
- 13,000 -14,000 developers are writing apps for Pebble
- Over 400,000 pebbles in the field
- About 60% of customers on the website buy the Pebble steel
- 45% of backers came from outside the U.S.
- 60% - 70% of the website traffic comes from outside the U.S.
- Pebble ships to more than 150 countries
Some takeaways from the talk
Wearables should be fashion focused
Pebble values fashion and has opened up opportunities for designers to accessorize the Pebble smartwatch. To serve the demand, Migicovsky and his team are looking into customizations. For example, Migicovsky said, “We released 3D print files on GitHub so that designers can create bangles, sticky wraps, snap on Pebble covers...etc.” Having taken a lesson from the Apple, the Pebble team approves these design ideas before releasing them to the public.
Make wearables that stick
According to Migicovsky, “We love to make a product that meshes into a user’s life. Pebble really lets you live your life a little better.” Pebble attempts to improve the user's life from the get-go. In addition, offering an open-platform means that the Pebble smartwatch will only become more useful over time as developers build additional apps for it. Pebble’s strategy is to introduce some basic value first, but it does not want to stop there. Pebble wants to offer many more use cases and apps that a user can benefit from to make it sticky.
Customization is key
Migicovsky mentioned that Pebble wants to create a product that provides value to people on their terms. He shared a real example about Pebble, “What’s interesting is that with every person there is a different thing that they do even when it comes to notifications. People have different use case. Some are getting their Hangout notifications on their wrists. Others turn off everything but phone calls.” This made me think that a successful wearable device should let users customize it to fit their lifestyle.
Adding context is important
Migicovsky thinks that there will be more and more sensors around us soon, even embedded on our clothes. A Pebble smartwatch can add values to those wearables. Migicovsky said, “One of the cool things about Pebble is that it has a Bluetooth radio, so it can talk to Bluetooth LE enabled devices.“ It is still a concept, but Migicovsky painted a picture where Pebble would be useful, “Pebble can talk directly to a heart-rate monitor, power sensors, and iBeacons.” One of the use cases Migicovsky said was that you might prefer looking at a display on your wrist than looking at a display on a heart rate monitor under your t-shirt.
The right technology has to be available for a product to be successful
Migicovsky mentioned two reasons why his team could not make Pebble as successful a few years ago as it is today. First, people did not normally have an Internet connected device in their pocket as they do today. And second, battery life was not as good as it is today. As battery life improves, Migicovsky sees Pebble introducing cellphone chips later when the technology is supportive for lower power consumptions.
User experience should be taken in consideration for a wearable form factor
As a part of creating a better user experience on wearables, Migicovsky envisions a future where a Pebble smartwatch is not tied to a phone. He gave an example, “There is an awesome app called PebbleBucks, a Starbucks app for Pebble that lets you pay using a barcode pushed to your Pebble by your phone. Why cannot the barcode be enabled at a Starbucks location served by some kind of iBeacon Bluetooth LE system and that is something worth investigating. Over time, we want to look into more elaborated scenarios.“
Pebble has been building the first OS that is purposely designed for a wearable platform unlike Android Wear which is based on an existing OS. Migicovsky believes the Pebble’s OS also differentiates it from competitors in terms of providing the best user experience.
Working with constraints like limited battery power, Pebble succeeded in differentiating itself and offering a unique experience. According to Migicovsky, one of the interesting visions of a computing platform is that it can work separate from the Internet, but when it connects back to the Internet, the data get transferred back to apps for a user to use. For example, Migicovsky said that when someone goes to swim and a Pebble smartwatch becomes separated from a user’s phone, but once the user comes back to a locker room, he will be connected to his phone via Bluetooth and his fitness app syncs the data from the Pebble smartwatch.
Conclusion
Migicovsky provided some interesting insights on what goes into making a successful wearable like Pebble and the exciting possibilities the future holds for wearables. Moreover, I was intrigued by the factors that Migicovsky mentioned have shaped the unique user experience that Pebble offers. For example, there is a strong online community for the Pebble smartwatch that helps both the users and the Pebble team. Another interesting approach that Pebble is taking is to tap into more retail spaces. According to Migicovsky,“All Target stores will be rolling out Pebbles in the next month or two.”