For many people I know, the main casualty of the pandemic has been the phenomenon of positive reinforcement. Nearly everyone I’ve come into contact with over the past year (and very few have actually come into contact with me) has seen a decrease in positive feedback and an increase in negative reinforcement, often driven by understandable frustrations around them. What does this have to do with smartwatches? Great question. I’ve found that one of the most common positive reinforcements I’ve received during the pandemic has been via my Apple Watch or other smartwatches. How is this possible?
Humans tend to need a sufficient amount of positive reinforcement, i.e. feedback that you are doing a good job or that you are moving in the right direction. Most of us take this for granted if we receive enough positive reinforcement in our daily lives. Most people don’t realize they need positive reinforcement until they are faced with a situation where positive reinforcement is scarce. So the question is, how do we supplement the human need for positive reinforcement when it becomes harder to get it naturally? It turns out that smartwatches can help a lot.
How exactly? It’s that feeling you get when you look at your smartwatch and get a notification that you’ve met your activity goal, or at least made a good start. Over the past year, I’ve worn both Google Wear OS smartwatches and Apple Watches (mostly the latter), each in their own way providing positive reinforcement in the form of notifications. Receiving this feedback can feel surprisingly good, especially during times of isolation when there are few (or no) people to witness your accomplishments.
If there’s one thing people want to hear more about during the pandemic, it’s that we’re doing a good job. When my Apple Watch tells me I’ve successfully completed my activity goal, it’s not only a reminder that I’m doing something good for my health, it also gives me a little bit of recognition for my efforts. I’m starting to not even care about what a machine tells me.
That’s the interesting thing about positive reinforcement. We probably prefer reinforcement from other humans, but we’ll accept it if it’s suboptimal. Consider the popularity of pets. They function primarily as emotional proxy for the emotions most people want to receive from other humans. The Apple Watch is not a pet, but it follows you around and keeps a pretty close eye on what you’re doing. If there are no humans around to reward you for good behavior, you’ll probably be perfectly happy to receive some praise from an artificial intelligence.
Some call this the “gamification” of activity. That is, the software in the smartwatch just gives you little chemical rewards when you achieve your goals, and those little chemical rewards are addictive. That’s true, but these are “addictions” we had before smartwatches infiltrated our lives. If the smartwatch can supplement a real human validation, like reminding me that going for a walk was a good idea, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. As a result, I feel better, and I think the desire to “close my rings” (referring to achieving my exercise goals via the Apple Watch software) has helped me maintain a higher level of activity.
The personal nature of smartwatches makes notifications about daily activities feel more natural on a smartwatch than via a smartphone. From the very beginning of the Apple Watch launch, Apple used phrases like “Apple Watch is the most personal product we’ve ever made.” Engineers back then knew what consumers are only now beginning to understand: that a smartwatch’s constant contact with you and getting to know you on a deeper level means that your relationship with the smartwatch becomes very personal.
Current notifications that can give wearers a sense of real positive reinforcement are, at least for now, mostly focused on athletic goals. Smart device makers know that gamifying mechanical tasks makes them more fun, and we’ve known for decades that games have the ability to motivate people and boost their self-esteem. Life is not a game, because there’s really no clear way to win. But software can turn an everyday part of human existence into a game, complete with scores, competitions, prizes, and even community.
Even though Apple Watch notifications are mostly limited to fitness tracking, their variety is interesting. What I really like is how nuanced some of the notifications are. For example, Apple Watch can let you know if you’ve exercised enough in a given 24-hour period (measured, for example, by whether your heart rate was high while exercising for a certain amount of time). If you hit that goal, you’ll see a notification and an animation on the watch face. Apple Watch can also recognize if you hit a goal, especially early, or if you’ve gone well beyond your usual activity level. These require a more nuanced analysis of the wearer’s behavior. Privacy advocates will probably rile up on this, but the tradeoff is that the software knows you to a certain extent. And who doesn’t want to be more noticed and understood?
I can imagine that in the future, clever smartwatch software developers will find new ways to communicate “good news” to people through notifications on their wrist. “Good job, you got to see your mom” or “You made it to work on time this week” are words of encouragement that smartwatches are uniquely designed to share with us. These are automated (and impersonal) communications, but I don’t think that completely destroys their ability to make the human wearer feel good. Notifications are based on choices that we humans actually make. If we make a choice to be active enough, a notification that acknowledges the outcome of that choice will feel good, regardless of whether it’s issued by a living being. The idea of being reminded when we’ve done something good is a very therapeutic feeling in today’s world.
The longer we wear a smartwatch such as the Apple Watch, the more we find it becomes more personal. For most consumers, this is probably a good thing. This topic would not be complete without a warning that there are potential downsides to these technologies if consumers do not pressure software and hardware manufacturers to respect certain rights and apply necessary morals. Privacy is a major concern for many, but I do not think it diminishes the value of these products. Smartwatch software makers can easily limit the data they collect from users, while still providing highly personalized services to consumers who want their smartwatches to know about them, as smartwatches actively track them.
What I am most concerned about is not actually privacy, but mental health. Gamification of human processes can lead to negative outcomes as much as gamification can lead to positive outcomes. Just look at how psychologists are increasingly blaming social media platforms for human anxiety and depression. Games are fun if you win, but frustrating if you don’t. While some users may want to increase the challenge level of their own digital coach, I think most people who wear smartwatches want their digital companions to be friendly and supportive. The good feeling you get when you know you’ve achieved your exercise goal for the day can just as easily become a negative feeling if you’re reminded that you didn’t. Apple engineers seem to intuitively understand that consumers want good news, or no news at all. I don’t think this rule will spread as more people wear smartwatches.
I hope that society will adapt to the emergence of digital gratification devices (or their equivalents) by having more discussion on this topic. Technology is not just there to make us feel bad; it also has the power to make us feel good. Technology is just a tool, and how users feel when interacting with it is up to the developers of those tools. I think this is a very salient concept in an era when many people blame the Internet medium for many of the world’s problems.
Traditional mechanical watches are appreciated by their wearers because they tend to make people happy. Smartwatches need to be that way too. It’s not enough to be a robust and powerful tool. For the smartwatch platform to truly gain consumer acceptance, these products must make consumers feel good all the time they’re using them. Products like the Apple Watch are off to a good start, and we hope that every year smartwatches become very personal, reminding the wearer that they’ve stood up long enough that day, worked hard, and are succeeding. For more information, visit Apple’s website.
All of the images above were taken with an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max smartphone and are intended primarily to capture the Apple Watch in very dark environments and to demonstrate how the iPhone’s technology can amplify available light in environments where such photography normally wouldn’t be possible.
