The Examined Life of Rachel Kalmar: Data Scientist #WearableWednesday

rachelkalmar

Nice profile of Misfit Wearables‘ data scientist, Rachel Kalmar, on MAKE:

That elegant aluminum disc on her right wrist: that’s Shine, the “personal activity tracker” created by Misfit Wearables. Kalmar is the company’s data scientist.

Shine enters the crowded health monitoring field with a design centered around a simple question: Are you moving enough? It measures your activity and syncs with an iPhone app (with Android coming soon).

The 40-person company is based in Daly City, California, but has significant operations in Vietnam.

Shine, coming in June from Misfit Wearables.

Earlier this year, Shine completed a spectacularly successful crowdsourcing campaign on Indiegogo, raising $846k, more than eight times its original $100k goal. This was in addition to $7.6 million in VC funding the company raised in April, 2012. Now Misfit Wearables has 10,000 pre-orders to fill for a promised June delivery date. Retail price will be $99.

Like the rest of the company, Kalmar is focused on fulfillment. But she is also wondering what will happen after 10,000+ Shines are collecting and transmitting data from people’s wrists, necklaces, and pockets.

“My question is: What should we be doing with all this data?” she asks. “And how do we make it useful?”


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