Device manufacturers are starting to realise that when it comes to giving people health data, less is sometimes more
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThese are the sort of revelations that a continuous glucose monitor, a coin-sized device attached to the skin, beams to your smartphone’s screen. The device lasts for two weeks and has a tiny needle that gets just under the skin. Every few minutes it measures the concentration of sugar in the fluid between the cells there—a good proxy for what is going on in the bloodstream.
Such metabolic studies have changed the scientific thinking on what a healthy diet looks like. It has turned out that many seemingly healthy people often have large post-meal spikes in blood sugar, which have been linked to the development of pre-diabetes. Without any intervention pre-diabetes turns into diabetes in 37-70% of cases within four years. The sugar dips that often follow the spikes were recently found to be problematic, too, because they make people feel hungry.
However, thoughtful suggestions that make compliance easier are the exception. As too often with the design of new tech products, behavioural science is an afterthought. When she began researching her book, Natasha Schüll, the cultural anthropologist from, found trying to decode the logic behind many health-tech products very frustrating. Then she realised that there was no logic.
The problem is that people do not just need a product that is well designed. They need a product that is well designed for them, says Liz Ashall-Payne from Orcha, a British organisation that evaluates the quality of health apps for clients like the National Health Service. As she points out, buying a pair of trousers online is made easy by filters for size, colour and style, but no such system exists on the app stores.
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