WTF Summit Recap: Insights From Leaders in Connected Experiences

Smart devices and connected apps are a part of daily life for many people—sharing our location, keeping an eye on our homes, and even monitoring our sleep cycles and heart rates. This ecosystem of connected experiences offers new conveniences and insights, but it also raises critical questions about information overload, data privacy, and whether these technologies will one day be able to successfully integrate with existing systems and processes.

At the Women in Tech, Media and Finance Summit, Meredith Mazzilli, an editor at The Information, explored these issues in depth with three leaders at the forefront of connected experiences:

• Liz Hamren, CEO, Ring
• Dorothy Kilroy, chief commercial officer, Oura
• Lauren Antonoff, chief operating officer, Life360

How Much Information Is Too Much?

Mazzilli noted that many people are overwhelmed with data in both their personal and professional lives, and she asked the panelists how their companies can help customers stay connected without subjecting them to “information overload.”

“The first thing is making sure that you’re providing something that’s super important,” said Hamren, whose company’s smart doorbells and other connected devices allow people to remotely monitor their homes and small businesses. “People really want to know who’s at their front door. They want to know what’s happening at their home or business.”

Kilroy said that, far from burdening consumers, Oura’s smart rings fill a gap in health information. “I actually think we lack data in understanding our own health,” she said. “If we’re lucky, we go to the doctor’s office once a year. In those 10 minutes, that doctor has to look at your entire health and be able to make predictions and help you understand it. [Doctors] are time-starved, they’re overworked, and I think we have to move toward empowering the customer themselves with that data so they can unpack it.

“Our job is to make that more easily understood and digestible so it’s not overwhelming,” Kilroy added.

Taking Care With Consumer Data

The panelists also touched on the challenge of balancing the desire to leverage data as effectively as possible with the need to safeguard customers’ information and protect their privacy.

The Life360 location-sharing app lets family members keep track of one another—for example, allowing people to see when their children arrive home from school, or whether an aging parent has left the house after dark. The app can also detect automobile crashes and automatically send emergency notifications to family members.

Antonoff said the company is focused not on gathering as much information as possible, but rather on finding ways to provide even more value to its customers with the data it already collects. “What we’re looking at now is, how do we take that power and insight and bring it to everyday family life?” she said. “How can we tell you when patterns don’t look normal in your family, when your kid has gone away from school, when their behavior patterns are changing in ways that you might want to understand or check into?”

Hamren stressed the importance of transparency and consumer control. “Our strategy is to build tools so that consumers can control how their data is stored, know where it’s stored, and have control over whether it’s saved at all,” she said.

What’s Next for Connected Experiences?

All three companies operate on a subscription model, and Hamren touted the approach as a way to drive not only revenue but also innovation. “It’s very straightforward with your customers,” she said. “They tell you every month or every year whether the service is still valuable. I think that’s a great dynamic. It also allows you to make the product better and reinvest in new features.”

A member of the audience noted that her own doctor has “no interest” in the data connected by wearable health trackers. She asked whether smart devices and connected apps are likely to continue to operate in silos, or whether traditional players such as hospitals might one day integrate data from these experiences into their own operations.

Kilroy said wearables can give physicians “superpowers” by enabling remote patient monitoring and proactive intervention, but she didn’t make a specific prediction about how long it will take for provider networks to embrace these technologies. Instead, she emphasized how connected experiences can give more control to consumers and patients today.

“We call it [being] the CEO of their own health,” Kilroy said. “Consumers are not happy, and they’re taking [matters] into their own hands.”