The OMbra by OMsignal
Amid the smart watches, fitness bands and other wrist-based devices dominating the wearable tech scene at CES this year, there was... a bra. In a sea of gadgets targeted predominantly to men, one product stood out for the very fact it could be nothing but aimed at women.
The OMbra, as it's called, is an intelligent sports bra. Created by OMsignal, the team behind the Ralph Lauren PoloTech Shirt, it tracks the biometric basics you’d expect, including heart rate, distance and calories burned. But there also some exclusive metrics created by the company, such as “breathing rhythm” to help moderate your respiratory system and enable you to use less energy when running; “fatigue” to gauge what state of cumulative fatigue your body is in based on previous training; and “biometric effort”, which tells you exactly the level of effort you’ve put into each run.
All of that syncs to your mobile under the new OMrun platform, aiming to help you improve efficiency and performance over time. It also connects with other apps including Apple Health, Strava, Nike+, MapMyFitness and Runtastic.
While those digital aspects are central, key to the delivery of this product, according to OMsignal co-founder and CEO Stephane Marceau, was ensuring it actually functioned as a comfortable and supportive item to wear first and foremost. Significant research was done into biomechanics for instance, focusing on such details as straps being the most common complaints about sports bras, and that the way a woman runs will change depending on how her breasts are supported. I spoke to Marceau to find out more...
RA: What made you launch a wearable tech product for women, and how did you get to where you are today?
SM: As a company, we wanted to do products for both genders from the beginning. We tried to do a bra very early on in fact, but it was too difficult and we weren’t mature enough as a company. We did early prototypes and women thought the aesthetics weren’t high enough more than anything. So we focused on men for a few years [launching the OMsignal line of smart shirts as well as collaborations with the aforementioned Ralph Lauren].
We’ve now been working on the OMbra line for over a year, and we’ve done over 1,600 prototypes of it along the way. By putting a lot of energy into it through our team of experienced sports bra designers, scientists and engineers, we’ve been able to solve a lot of problems. Most importantly, we’ve always gone back to “real” women during our research to ensure that we got to a product that resonates.
If you look at the wearable market since the beginning, it really started with activity trackers, and women were driving that adoption. It was unusual, because new technology is normally driven by men. In this case, the women were buying, and that’s in spite of the fact the products to some degree resemble clunky gadgets. I’m making generalizations here, but the products out there were things you put on your extremities, which men gravitate to more than women.
So we did a lot of research into the psychology of wearables and found that men and women are of course very different. Again to generalize, but women have a better understanding of how the body ticks. And with sports, they value feedback that will help better themselves, whereas men tend to be looking more for comparisons with others.
We took that insight, and the fact that women have been driving the [wearables] field even though there has been no product in the category that was truly designed with a female perspective, and that’s what we tried to do. It was a very deliberate approach to serving a women’s product.
RA: Can you share more insight into the development of the bra itself?
SM: The main thing we realized was that the first dimension of the product we needed to work on in our development process was not the digital experience. That’s humbling for those coming from a technology background, which is a big chunk of our team. We had to acknowledge the first dimension of the product was about comfort, support and aesthetic. Only after that was it then about the digital magic – taking the product experience to a whole new level.
We spent a lot of time on the overall look and the shaping of the product, from removable pad systems to different types of yarn. In terms of comfort, support was the first issue mentioned, especially for a larger cup size. So a lot of time was focused on delivering what’s right for women, especially those who do a lot of running – it was about optimizing support and comfort. We learnt so many terms, from “uniboobs” to “unpleasant bounce” along the way!
Controlling pressure on the shoulder was the main thing, so we designed a strap so that pressure is not absorbed by the body but by the bra. It absorbs into the side so it supports the shoulder throughout. It’s also adjustable to suit different fit changes during the month.
The bra is very durable too. We’ve done deep washability tests on it, with over 100 washes and there’s been no degradation in the signal. And it’s the same price as a high-end sports bra [$149 for the start-up kit, which includes your first bra and the hardware module that goes with it, then $59 for every additional bra thereafter]. If you’ve got that plus the digital magic, you’ll ask yourself why would you buy a “dumb” bra?
RA: When you brought in that “digital magic”, what was your main focus?
SM: With OMrun we bring new metrics on things like breathing patterns. We took a very structured approach to delivering that. We plotted the biometric patterns of 25 extreme runners, 25 moderate runners and 25 beginners, and we noticed the most discerning pattern is the way we breathe.
We take those signals alongside heart rate and variability, and measure what we call your running economy. When you run, 50% of your energy goes on breathing – so we coach you on how to make that breathing more efficient.
With additional metrics we can estimate your biometric effort. And because we do that over multiple runs, we can estimate your level of fatigue and start to coach you on the level of the next run you can do. We’re taking interesting information, which is just delivered as data through many other trackers, and using it to coach you on doing better. It’s great motivation. It takes a while to see your body change in the mirror, but with this you can see your progress every run and every workout.
The OMbra by OMsignal
RA: Where do you see the future of the wearable technology market moving?
SM: The main thing is that the term “wearable” will disappear. At the moment, you put on the OMbra, and then you snap the hardware module onto it. What’s going to happen over the next few years is that hardware is going to disappear. I’m oversimplifying, but when that happens, the big advantage is that what will be left are clothes, as we’ve worn all of our lives, essentially at the same price, but now they’re smart.
A few years from now, you’ll be able to go to a store and buy a bra and shirt and you won’t ask if it’s connected, as it’s just expected to be. Clothes and textiles allow you to capture much deeper biometic signals; it’s self-evident that this is going to happen.
There’s so much happening with conductive yarn, with additive electronics. The smart textile field is in the middle of an explosion, and that will enable all of that capability in any type of normal clothing. We have all this information about our cars and other things in life, apart from our own lives and our bodies. That should be our base level expectation.
It’s a very large at-scale opportunity. Right now it’s about sport, the future is about wellness, but over time it’s about monitoring and preventing heart failure and other health issues. The future of wearable technology is about the disruption of the clothing industry, but its impact on healthcare will be even larger.
