The makers of the Basis fitness band were at Pepcom’s Digital Experience event showing off their namesake accessory, but that’s not all that they wanted to reveal. They also demoed their new web interface, which is meant to take all of data the Basis can collect and it turn into a meaningful way for users to track their activity levels.
If you’re not familiar with the Basis, the first thing you notice about it is that it’s chock-full of sensors — on top of drawing data from a built-in accelerometer, the Basis also sports an optical sensor that it uses to determine your heart rate. The Basis is also capable of tracking its user’s galvanic skin response, not to mention measuring both ambient temperature and body temperature.
With all these sensors, it’s easy to imagine that the Basis could overload its users with too much fine-grained activity data. A quick look at their new web interface though alleviates those fears — CEO Jef Holove tells us that Basis has taken steps to steamline all that data into easy-to-understand metrics like calories burned and hours slept.
Users are also rewarded points based on how active they are, though it’s worth mentioning that the points don’t actually do anything. Rather, they’re meant to be a quick way for Basis users to figure out what activities are most worth repeating in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Useful as all that sounds, one of the big questions that the Basis raises is whether or not the world needs another fitness watch. Holove seems to think so — regardless of the competition they post, he wants competitive products to succeed inthe healthtech space. If nothing else, the efforts of all these companies vying for people’s attention could succeed at making people take greater interest in their health.