Shine: A self-tracking gadget that’s as cute as a button

Now Jawbone’s making a comeback on the self-tracking gadget scene we’ve found ourselves with an abundance of devices that we can strap to our bodies, bras and other random bits of clothing, but aren’t they starting to look a little… well… rubbish?

We don’t want to get all fluffy and shallow and put the way a gadget looks over its features (although that’s exactly what we’re doing), but most of the devices on the market just don’t look good enough to wear proudly day in and day out.

Well, enter the Shine. Yep it looks like a watch battery  or a teeny tiny spaceship, but the gadget created by Misfit Wearables aims to give users a great self-tracking experience in a cute package.

Sonny Vu, the Founder of Misfit Wearables, tells Fast Company:

“Don’t you want a product that you’d wear even if it didn’t measure anything? I tried wearing a Fitbit on a tie once and it tore the silk on the tie.

“We should expect more from wearable technology. To be really wearable, you have to be comfortable wearing it, it has to be useful, and the last thing is it has to be really desirable and precious to wear.”

The gadget looks like a little pebble and it’s about the size of a small coin, meaning it can be worn on the wrist, attached to shows or on a belt, bra… you get the picture.

The Shine doesn’t just come in a pretty package though, it measures steps, the number of strokes you swim and the pedal movements if you’re a big cycling fan. However, it’s not just about obsessively tracking your activity, the dots on the outer edge of the little button light up when the user is close to meeting their daily goal, so you can just focus on how well you’re doing and not bog your mind down with tonnes of data that doesn’t mean much. Having said that, you can get the more detailed information if you’re REALLY into self-tracking from the Shine’s application, which lets you visualise all kinds of data and stats about your activity throughout the day.

The device is set to retail for around $99 in the states but it’s only just been launched as an indiegogo campaign and Vu and his team hope to raise $100,000 to get it out into the wild.

[Via Fast Company]