Tracked from morning to evening

Editor's note: Felix Rios is market research technology manager in the London office of research firm Ugam.

I wake up every day around 7 a.m., my iPhone rings, I pick it up and snooze it three times before I actually have enough strength to get out of bed. The first thing I tend to do is check the weather, followed up by WhatsApp messages, Facebook and work e-mails.

I prep myself to go downstairs and take the streets. When walking to the kitchen, I like looking at the Nest thermostat on my living room wall; the screen just fades on beautifully and shows me my house temperature.

I grab a glass of orange juice and log it in my MyFitnessPal app. I’m trying to live a healthier life and logging every calorie I consume is supposed to help me achieve that. I cheat very often and tend to “forget” to log the odd Krispy Kreme.

I open Google App and it tells me when my next train departs from my station. I rush out of the house, open Spotify and sometimes if I feel adventurous enough I pick one of the recommended playlists.

Walking to the station, I look at the Nest app on my phone to make sure that it has set itself to “away” mode. I know it will do it but it makes me feel that I’m finally living a Jetsons-like life. No sign of flying cars or a robot maid yet but my phone is talking to my house’s thermostat.

It takes me an hour to get from my house in Southwest London to the office in Central London. I have enough time to read my magazines and social media on Flipboard and check my health app on my iPhone. It is nicely aggregating the calories from my food diary and counting my daily steps. My Fitbit doesn’t communicate with Apple’s HealthKit yet, so I have to open another app to see my sleep patterns.

In the office, I’m juggling between Outlook, Chrome and Excel to get my work done. I’m clipping all sorts of useful stuff using my Evernote account, which allows me to always have those interesting clips readily accessible on any of my devices.

Around 3 p.m. I get a motivational text message that I set up via IFTTT connected to my Fitbit, reminding me that I have to walk more if I want to meet my daily step target.

At 5 p.m., I walk to Starbucks. As I’m approaching the store, the logo discreetly pops up in the bottom left corner of my iPhone, I swipe up and my loyalty card is ready to pay for my skinny tall latte. One more star and I get a free coffee.

Another notification pops up, this time, Mynd is reminding me that my next conference call is in 30 minutes. Kindly it also tells me that it takes me 10 minutes to walk back to the office.

It’s now 6:30 p.m., time to start Spotify and check with Google when is my next train home.

Sensors and gadgets

I am a self-confessed geek and an early adopter. I have the inexplicable urge to get my hands on the next technology device that promises to change the world. On a daily basis, I have more sensors and gadgets on me than Neil Armstrong on his first expedition to the moon. Google, Facebook, Nest, Apple, Fitbit and Netflix know more about my life than my mom, my wife and probably myself. I am aware that this makes me part of a very rare minority, however, this plethora of devices and interactions with applications convert me in a data goldmine!

When I made the conscious decision to live a connected life, I accepted that companies will be mining my data. It’s the price I’m paying to get better and more relevant products. The growth of social media platforms and Gmail may show that other consumers think the same way. We keep signing up for store cards to get discounts for example. Those pesky store points increase slower than the Mumbai traffic yet I better not forget to hand over my supermarket card at the checkout!

While the amount of data that I broadcast on a daily basis is ideal to understand my behavior patterns and preferences, it also shows clearly one of the challenges for the market research industry: My data resides in silos. The devices, applications and manufacturers are making sure that it remains like this.

If Starbucks could see my Fitbit data, it could suggest one of the lighter options when I walk to the store. It might prompt me to buy a granola bar instead of a double chocolate muffin or a soya milk latte instead of a caramel macchiato. It could even automatically update my calorie count and the impact on my daily steps goal to compensate for the indulgent coffee break.

Siloed data is a big challenge. Both Apple and Google understand it and are trying really hard to push their own aggregation standards. Apple’s solutions are HomeKit and HealthKit. Google’s is Nest (via Thread standard) and it also recently released its answer to aggregate data from health trackers, Google Fit.

A unified standard is the foundation for a universal data aggregation platform that will allow us to get actionable insights at a level that we have never been able to get before.

Peace of mind

Market research panels and online communities are the natural place for us to start exploring these technologies and the natural place for them to grow and mature. First and most importantly, it is critical that the recruitment process complies with all the industry regulations, guidelines and best practices. This gives participants peace of mind that their data is being used exclusively for research purposes.

It is important that we protect and nurture the trust that our participants have in us. We should remember every day that it takes years to build trust but only seconds to break it and forever to repair it.

At our firm, our experience recruiting specialized device panels of physicians and supporting device consumer panels has shown us that technology is a very engaging and attractive incentive. With a layer of good and constant communication and the correct level of support, we are able to keep them highly engaged with minimum attrition and high levels of satisfaction.

Already the Internet of Things (IoT), wearables and connected device manufacturers have started to take baby steps in allowing access to some of the data via API. While the concept of aggregating multiple data sources is not alien to the marketing research industry, in the very near future it will be our bread and butter. As this technology becomes mainstream, our clients will demand it from us.

A few years from now, I can see life for this type of research outside of panels and online communities (e.g., IoT and wearables). I can also see a public marketplace of data where individuals would be able to select what information to share and choose the best bidder. If I am generating all this data, why can’t I just sell it directly? I can even see a band system where my data costs more depending on how granular it is. As participants become aware that their data has monetary value, it will lure more people into this vast and open behavioral data market-place, making it richer and more dynamic.

You just need to do a simple Google search for “wearables forecast” or “Internet of things forecast” and you are going to see that the future is nothing but exciting. The next 10-15 years promise to wow us. If the analysts get it right, in the next decade, our homes, cars and personal devices will be connected and talking to each other.

In its essence, market research is about observing the few to understand the behavior of the many. Asking questions has been one of the most important ways we’ve had to get data. The new breed of devices that will inevitably be part of our lives will not only allow us to ask fewer questions but will also allow us to make them more relevant, smarter and contextual. We have to understand this and embrace it. This will be one of the most important changes that our industry has made since we started collecting data.