I have been following Continue since Deepinder’s tweet about it and was intrigued when the company rebranded to Temple. However, after a few quick Google and GPT searches, I realised that perhaps the only possibility could be a device meant to be attached to the body at the temple.
(I also considered some form of a program centred around measuring one’s body stats with device(s) attached to the temple. But if that were the case then the website wouldn’t have a shipping policy. This led me to the conclusion that it has to be a device that can be attached to the body at the temple.)
After a fair amount of prompting, I was able to come up with a list of biomarkers that Temple could potentially be tracking. This could be highly optimistic to the point of being outrageous, or even missing a few key metrics, but this is what I found was possible and useful.
Biomarkers
- HR & RHR
- HRV
- Chewing Activity
- Skin Temperature
- Respiratory Rate
- Blink metrics
- SpO₂
- EEG
- EDA
- ECG, Blood Pressure, A-Fib (will require some form of FDA Approval which'll delay time to market)
Features:
- Sleep Tracking
- Focus & Productivity Monitoring
- Screen Comfort & Eye Health
- Stress & Calmness Tracking
- Meal Logging & Mindful Eating Support
- Neck & Head Posture
Basis these fundamental features, we can introduce a plethora of support features (that also venture into the territory of providing suggestions for improvements) like:
- Sleep Fragility Insights: Tracks how easily one wakes up at night and offers tips to improve the sleep environment and correlated habits.
- Flow State Coaching: Guides one into and helps maintain deep focus. We can further extend this to notify users of optimal break timings.
- Drowsiness Detection: Identifies signs of drowsiness and prompts one to move or change the environment before fatigue starts impacting them.
- Fever Detection: Essentially, pre-emptively predicting if the person is bound to be ill due to higher temperature (something similar to what Ultrahuman is already doing).
Based on cursory readings across forums discussing other biomarker measurement devices, here are some of the features that users ask for from their current devices:
- Extra Attention Mode + Planning Ahead: People often worry about their vitals after getting a vaccine or after they participate in an activity that they expect will impact their body. Perhaps we can make the interaction between the app and the user more proactive during these times, along with unlocking any aspects of the device that we otherwise activate occasionally / momentarily.
Similarly, we can add an 'add your flights' feature for when one is travelling across the globe. We can then give suggestions on alterations that they should make to their sleep schedule to minimise jetlag (of course supported by their recent sleep schedule data). - Selective Automatic Activity Detection: Exists in Apple Watch, but a problem across other wearables.
- Meal Logging: Tends to be a common feature request as people want a single app to be their master app. I think we can do this in a great way, especially using jaw movement detection.
- Notifications to Family: Exists in Apple Watch, but a common feature request across other wearables.
- Walking Pad detection: Allowing the device to understand that physical exertion is taking place even when the person is working at a desk with their hands lying still.
I have made a few fundamental assumptions with respect to the device:
- It can stick to the head well enough such that it doesn’t fall off during head movements, workouts etc.
- It is waterproof.
- It has an accelerometer and gyroscope.
- It isn’t intrusive while wearing spectacles / sunglasses.