INDUSTRY & TECHNOLOGY >>Continued from page 12 Relating back to the fitness tracking mechanisms, all of the college student respondents actively engage in closing the activity rings. Closing the move and exercise rings was perceived as the most important feature for reaching fitness goals aside from participating in monthly challenges and workouts. An interesting thing that is seen as “very important” by 5/6 of the users is workout detection; the convenience of workout detection implies that there are possibly too many buttons to press to get to the workout app/area. Additionally, the water-resistance of the Apple Watch is “very important” to all survey respondents. College users also report that calorie burn, heart rate, and step
monitoring are quite accurate no matter the medium the user is working out in (air/water), therefore helping to achieve their fitness goals of gaining strength, losing weight, or simply maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Annoyances to consider with the Apple Watch include dirt getting into the microphone and how susceptible the screen is to being scratched or cracked. Review of Fitbit Considering only price, the Fitbit is a more viable option at half the cost of an Apple Watch. The Fitbit can measure the same activities as the Apple Watch, but it does not hold specific iOS features, such as Siri. To help motivate users, the Fitbit includes challenges and rac-
es. Users can compete with other people or just with themselves. Fitbit uses the same concept as the Apple Watch of "closing the rings," but Fitbit allows the user to customize what activity rings (steps, sleep score, etc.) are most important to them. There have been five Fitbit smartwatches in the market to date, each exhibiting more features than the last. Versa 2, released in 2019, included Amazon Alexa and 24/7 heart rate tracking. Versa 3, released in 2020, allows Android users to answer phone calls and use Google Assistant. The newest Fitbit, Fitbit Sense, includes features that track stress and blood oxygen measurements. Conclusion
13
Choosing between these two fitness trackers can be challenging due to the different features each watch possesses. It is important to know the main reasons you want to purchase a watch and your overall fitness goals. If focusing on the price, the Fitbit watch is undoubtedly a more manageable option for a college student, considering it has most of the features that the Apple Watch has for a drastically lower price. If focusing on the other characteristics unrelated to fitness, choose the watch that will provide more accessible features (camera, music, apps) without the need to take out your phone. If focusing on fitness, both have encouraging features to push you to your limits, so pick the watch that you think will better motivate you to achieve a healthy lifestyle.
No More Elevator Music Chirag Mehrotra Staff Reporter As the COVID-19 pandemic has raged on, people have been forced indoors. What do people do next? We start making more phone calls and often end up calling customer service. We are all cheerfully greeted with so-called elevator music for what seems like an eternity. We are glued to our phones during this time, patiently waiting for to be patched through to a real human. In doing so we waste countless hours of our lives waiting when we could be doing something productive and meaningful. There have been no alternatives to this until last month when Google announced a product that would change the game.
In late September, Google unveiled a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, aptly named “Hold for Me,” that could completely change how we interact with customer service. The new software will wait in line for the caller and alert them when a representative on the other side has connected. This could free up what can become hours spent waiting for the caller. They will be able to set their phones down and not worry about missing the representative. One might ask how this is any different from the call back feature we have witnessed in recent times, and the answer is not every company offers that option. Only a few companies offer to hold the customer’s place in line and call them back when they reach the
front. With the Google AI technology, however, the caller would not need to wait for any of the calls they make regardless of if the company offers a call back option. One drawback to the new technology is that it is based upon artificial intelligence. It would require multitudes of data just to set it up so that it can operate properly and even more data to patch any issues. There are arguments that the AI software could fail or malfunction, causing it to not work as intended and not alert the user when a representative has connected on the call. It could also prematurely alert the caller if an automatic voice comes on. In addition, it would not be easy for the software to differentiate between a live human voice and a pre-recorded audio voice. It
would require hours upon hours of call logs to accurately calibrate the software to minimize these issues. Even then, there is no guarantee the AI technology will work as it was designed to work. Introducing the new AI technology will revolutionize an aspect of customer service we have come to ignore: annoying music and long wait times. The new technology will allow people to save themselves the pain of listening to outdated music and do something productive while they wait. There are clear drawbacks since the software is still in its primitive stages, so it will be a while before it is officially introduced. Until it is, we must stay glued to our phones and tolerate the music.