I am not a branding expert. But I can understand that one might set some expectations by naming the product “Happy Ring”. Mental health is a delicate area, and not to be taken lightly. As a rule, it’s best to avoid all the things that are supposed to fix you without the necessary talk therapy and possibly medication. No wearable will replace that – certainly not in our lifetime.
Nor, indeed, can a consumer device analyze conditions. While doctors are recommending products like the Apple Watch to consumers, they are often considered a proxy for keeping track of one’s vitals whenever we are not at the doctor’s office.
In the end, I don’t think the name Happiness Ring does justice to the creator’s ambition. At once evoking 70s mood ring fashion, the product punches above its weight in terms of its ability to create profound change in the wearer. It’s a shame, because it’s obvious that our emotional state has physical manifestations in our bodies.
Image Credits: Good health
It’s something that many wearable companies are clearly working on. “Can the ring help identify symptoms of depression and anxiety?” Check out this inner aura study that tries to answer that question. There’s also this report that finds Apple working with UCLA to test using its consumer devices to detect conditions like anxiety, depression and cognitive decline.
Mental health is, understandably, a kind of wearable sacrament. Listen, it’s really hard right now. Who doesn’t just want to put on a ring to get a clear picture of their mental health? Mental health is big, scary, and inscrutable, and traditional coping mechanisms can seem insurmountable.
Happy Ring makes no claims of being a diagnostic tool. Instead, the company believes it has cracked the code for tracking wearable progress in a mental health analogue to fitness trackers like the Apple Watch and Aura. Like all those products, it envisions a way to track those important readings and provide actionable data to help more people get back on track.
Image Credits: Good health
Tinder founder Shane Rudd told TechCrunch that he teamed up with LVL Technologies founder Dustin Freckleton to determine whether a wearable device could provide an accurate picture of the wearer’s emotions.
“There were all these wearables that could help you track your fitness or your sleep,” Rudd says. But they ignored the elephant that is your mind. They were doing nothing when it came to mental health or state of mind. We asked the question: Can we somehow build a device to track what’s going on in your brain? If we can do that, can we help people better understand, have the language, and know what they can do to improve their mental health?”
In addition to traditional wearable sensors, the startup points to a custom-made EDA (electrodermal activity) detector as a product hardware variant. Fitbit announced its own version of the technology a few years ago as a way to detect a wearer’s stress level. Addressing “stress” and “mental health” with clothing seems like a more reasonable question.
“If you’re doing public speaking, you go on a first date, you go for a job interview, your hands start to sweat a little bit,” Freckleton says. “This is an emotional sweat reaction. There are evolutionary reasons why it happens. The EDA sensor is specifically designed to pick up the tiny changes caused by micro sweat on the skin and is the result of the autonomic nervous system.
Image Credits: Good health
Founded in late 2019, Happy Health currently employs 40 employees, 13 of whom are located in Austin, where the startup is headquartered. The company announced a $60 million Series A round led by ARCH Venture Partners.
“Money has gone into research and development and the best part has gone into developing wearable devices,” Freckleton said. “From the sensor level to the data quality level to the AI infrastructure level, there’s no comparable device.”
The product’s pre-order waiting list opens today. The company is offering a hardware-as-a-service model, right out of the gate. No upfront cost for hardware, plans start at $20 per month. This includes things like sleep analysis, heart rate monitoring and journal questionnaires. The content of thought is limited. Happy said he has no particular interest in entering that crowded market, and is instead exploring potential partnerships with third parties.
Image Credits: Good health
But there’s a practical aspect to the Link app, as well as an attempt to model how your mental health changes over time.
“Every metric we give you in your mind is the right time,” Rudd said. “So you can actually do something, open the app and see the results immediately. But we also give you CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) exercises, breathing exercises, meditation, educational classes – different things tailored to help you improve.”
