How Precision Matters in User Experience UX

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How Precision Matters in User Experience UX

Wearable health technology is now a staple in both wellness and clinical markets, with devices tracking everything from step counts to heart rate. The true potential of wearables lies not just in data collection but in delivering accurate, actionable insights that enhance user experience (UX). Precision monitoring is no longer a luxury but a necessity.

For companies developing wearable solutions, achieving precision can transform user satisfaction, market acceptance, and speed to market. By integrating advanced ultrasound technologies, businesses can address the accuracy challenge while creating a seamless, intuitive user experience.

Designing the User Experience

User experience in health wearables hinges on three key factors:

    • – Usability
    • – Trust
    • – Consistency

Without precision, these pillars quickly collapse.

Delivering Seamless Usability

The audience for wearables is broad and global. In the U.S., one in three adults reports using a wearable device; in China, more than 40% of adults report wearable usage. The demographics show adoption by men and women in nearly all age groups, with adoption growing as household income increases. The fastest growing segment is older adults (aged 55+) who are using wearables to monitor and maximize their health.

Regardless of age, user expectations drive UX demands. Those aged 18 – 44 already have a familiarity with technology, particularly smart phones. Their smart phone experience shapes their expectations for wearable UX—it should be easy, seamless and “just work.” For older adults, who are not digital natives, their expectations of UX are driven by age-related challenges such as short-term memory and processing challenges.

Wearables themselves must be easy and intuitive to use and if necessary, should seamlessly integrate with other devices, such as smartphones or tablets.

Designing for precision enables wearables to operate unobtrusively, without requiring repeated calibrations or complex user inputs. Cuffless blood pressure monitoring, for instance, eliminates the need for cumbersome calibration steps that disrupt UX. Devices that “just work” provide frictionless interactions, fostering higher long-term adoption.

Traditional optical, electrical, and motion-based sensors used in wearables often fall short when precision is required. They also often require frequent recalibration to maintain accuracy, which disrupts user experience and reduces long-term reliability. One innovative option is ultrasound technology, which does not require frequent recalibration. This adaptability and reliability ensure that precision monitoring does not come at the cost of design or usability—enabling UX to simply work.

Building Trust Through Actionable Insights

Accurate and reliable insights encourage users to adopt wearables as vital tools for health management. Wearables must go beyond surface-level tracking to deliver data users can act upon. For example, inaccurate blood pressure readings or hydration levels can mislead users and undermine their trust in the device.

Users typically rely on their wearables to deliver data in these categories:

  • Health Monitoring: Important data points include heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels and other baseline metrics.
  • Sleep Tracking: Common data includes sleep duration, quality and disturbances
  • Fitness Analysis: Includes everything from counting steps to tracking workout duration and intensity.

Many use their devices daily, either to track trends or to make behavior modifications or lifestyle changes, from the simple to the complex. This can be as simple as reminders to stand or move, and as complex as changing a workout routine. Users demand precise data so they can make the right choices.

In the drive to deliver more precise and consistent data, wearable companies are looking for new solutions. Advanced technologies such as ultrasound are emerging as game-changers. Ultrasound provides deeper, more accurate insights than traditional sensors by penetrating beneath the skin to capture detailed health data that isn’t affected by external factors such as skin tone, ambient light or sweat, and that looks beyond surface skin level to gather insights from the body itself.

Meeting Healthcare Expectations

Users aren’t just leveraging the insights to make lifestyle changes; they want to share their data with their medical professionals. A recent survey showed that an overwhelming 91% of patients say they are “somewhat” or “extremely” interested in sharing data collected using personal health tracking wearables with their doctors. Yet many doctors remain skeptical of the value of this data, citing concerns about accuracy, reliability and consistency.

A study published in the Journal of mHealth and UHealth of General Practitioners (GPs) found that doctors see many potential benefits to wearables: patient empowerment, informed decision-making, behavior-change implementation, awareness of one’s medical history, and higher body awareness. Yet one of their primary concerns was the reliability and accuracy of the devices available.  

Demonstrating accuracy and reliability are crucial for building trust, both for users and their healthcare providers. Optical, electrical and motion-based sensors may not deliver the level of accuracy that fosters trust because they cannot account for external factors such as skin tone, ambient light, and sweat. All of these can affect sensor accuracy, leading to inconsistent readings across diverse user groups. These limitations not only frustrate users but also inhibit the growth of wearables into more sophisticated, clinically useful tools.

Ultrasound offers an exciting alternative to traditional sensors that promises greater accuracy and uses a methodology that most medical professionals know and trust.

Ultrasound: A Precision-Driven Solution

Ultrasound technology can help businesses deliver on the key pillars of the required experience: usability, trust and consistency. Yet traditional ultrasound is bulky and requires professional usage and monitoring.

A recent breakthrough in ultrasound technology delivers ultrasound suitable for wearables. Novosound has created a unique printed ultrasound sensor that is truly flexible, high resolution, adaptable and scalable. Its thin-film ultrasound technology is particularly well-suited for wearables due to its unique attributes:

  1. High-Resolution Monitoring: Novosound’s flexible ultrasound sensors offer superior resolution, enabling precise measurements of vital metrics like blood pressure, hydration, and tissue health. This accuracy enhances user confidence—and can reassure medical providers.
  2. Seamless Integration: Novosound’s technology is designed to integrate easily into existing form factors, such as smartwatches, rings, or patches. This adaptability ensures that precision monitoring does not come at the cost of design or usability.
  3. Scalable and Cost-Effective: Traditional ultrasound sensors are often costly and difficult to scale. In contrast, Novosound’s thin-film manufacturing process allows for rapid production of high-performance sensors at a fraction of the cost, accelerating time-to-market.

Unlocking Precision for UX Success

Precision monitoring is not just about improving sensor accuracy—it’s about enhancing the entire wearable experience. By delivering reliable, actionable insights in a seamless format, wearables can transform how users manage their health.

The journey to precision requires collaboration between technology providers, manufacturers, and developers. Companies like Novosound specialise in working alongside wearable developers to tailor ultrasound solutions that meet specific needs. From rapid prototyping to scalable production, Novosound enables partners to:

  • Integrate precision sensors seamlessly into their devices.
  • Accelerate time-to-market through fast, customisable solutions.
  • Build reliable products that meet the demands of both consumers and healthcare providers.

Technologies like Novosound’s ultrasound sensors represent the next step in this evolution. Through collaboration and innovation, businesses can unlock the full potential of precision monitoring, offering solutions that are not only accurate but also user-friendly, reliable, and scalable.

Discover how Novosound’s innovations can support your wearable technology projects. Contact us today to learn more. Or, see it for yourself: Schedule a demo with us at CES 2025 to experience the future of wearable tech first-hand.