2020: The Year of Social Hardware

So often, the latest technology changes the way we interact and connect with one another. In recent years, social media and smartphones have dominated the landscape - giving us new channels and tools to stay in touch and create dialogue in ways we haven’t been able to before.  And now, we’re on the cusp of another shift.

In the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of a new type of technology - wearables. Most people typically associate this with FitBits and other fitness trackers, digital wristbands that let people create a community around physical activity. This category gave way to smartwatches and have since extended into hearables, medical devices and garments outfitted with sensors to capture, catalogue and report a myriad of data.

It’s a segment that shows no signs of slowing down. The global wearable market has been growing steadily since 2016 and is poised to reach nearly $60 billion by 2025. It’s clear that wearables are going to become a larger part of our everyday life.

However, an important part of that everyday life is the time we spend at work and work-related functions trying to cultivate and grow relationships with colleagues, partners, potential customers and more. Yet, most wearables focus on consumer needs versus professional, letting us quickly share personal information and messages rather than better our professional networks and opportunities. That is, until now. 

We’re entering an era of social hardware, and Proxfinity is leading the charge. So many of the social resources at our disposal, be it media or apps, actually make it more difficult for us to create meaningful business connections. Social environments, particularly when they are hinged to growing our sales goals or building relationships with colleagues and prospects, breed anxiety. Think about approaching a stranger for conversation, we typically default to a sense of dread and hesitation. Even the smartest and most talented people get nervous when it comes to interacting with someone they don’t know face-to-face, but yet - we rely on meetings, conferences and other events to make connections that will help us flourish professionally. Now, with the rise of wearables, we can use technology to alleviate the stress inherently built into meeting new people. Simply put, we’re taking the “not working” out of “networking.”

Our CUE smart badge was designed to make in-person interaction more approachable and effective. Combined with our back-end SaaS platform, we help attendees break the ice by alerting users to when they share common interests, have relevant work experience or skills to people nearby. The badge simply alerts users to the match, allowing two parties to initiate conversation easily and naturally. All the while, our CUE badges are tracking and collecting data that we analyze for clients - letting them know how many connections were made, who spoke to who, for how long, and so forth. And what does that mean? It means better ROI from the often costly investments companies make into meetings, conferences and other professional gatherings.

And that’s one of the many strengths of our badge - heat mapping. It encourages and verifies person-to-person interactions, and then makes them actionable. Another useful application? Imagine you are hosting a booth at an expo, the CUE will help facilitate live interactions on the floor and provide the data analysis companies need to take advantage of opportunities thereafter. With CUE, we can tell you how many people visited a booth, who they spoke with and topically what brought them together for more effective follow up. 

As we’ve seen over the years, hardware has continually evolved to ease social burdens, but until now it hasn’t existed to completely and intuitively serve that purpose. Wearables are changing that. 

Sure, we love our smartphones and tablets. But isn’t it time we brought the human experience back out from behind the screen? Using social hardware like the CUE, screens can work with us rather than against us - making better live, real-world connections and bridging people together, rather than giving us something to hide behind. At Proxfinity, we know that no matter what technology comes to market, it’s the people that are the heart of an authentic connection - we’re just helping them do it more efficiently.

As we embark on a new year, we’re excited to see where wearables will take us, at home, in the office, and beyond. Stay tuned for exciting updates from our team on where you can spot or use our CUE next.