I wonder if maybe there's a mis-match in the customer's problem being solved, and the expectations amongst different fragments or groups of customers.
I used disparate set pedometers, activity monitors, food and calorie loggers, and it was kind of a pain. But I did use all of those, and I lost more than 100 pounds using those tools, which are important. Others can get by without them. But why make it harder on yourself by having less information?
I now have a FitBit Flex -- and most of these tools are in the same site/app/device. It's great! Compared to the old set of tools I had, this is way easier.
The difference is that the market fragment of customers that are represented by people like me is that we are serious about fitness, and doing a few clicks or taps isn't so bad. Especially compared to my previous tools of notebooks, spread sheets, and bookmarked websites.
Having data every day is not only useful, but also vital. Even one day of eating the wrong things can wipe out several days worth of work
I'm serious, I'm determined, and aggressive to meet my goals and those old tools and the new easier tools help me out. A few taps won't stop me! Now that I'm going through these last 15-25 pounds, I need all the help I can get and the challenges I had in the past towards meeting these goals is dwarfed. by new challenges.
If you're serious, these tools are useful. If you are more casual, you may not find them so helpful.
I feel like fitness/sleep trackers show up how superficial our consumer electronics market is - products were basically sold based on the concept, hardware capabilities or pretty UIs, and there was an assumption that the 'clever stuff in the background' would just fall into place. But, in fact, the algorithms necessary to track sleep, walking, cycling, running, etc, based only on how one part of your body moves are really not at all trivial, and indeed some of that may be impossible just from such a limited source of information. And if I'm buying a device which claims to be able to do some or all of those things, we should see proper empirical, independent trials in advance that demonstrate that it works.
Remember Intel's Itanium? It was sold based on the concept and hardware capabilities, and there was an assumption that a "Sufficiently Smart Compiler" [1] would just fall into place. Knuth mentioned it later as "the Itanium approach that was supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write." [2]
This is quite similar when you put it the way you did: the hardware exists, it is intentionally stripped down to provide the theoretical minimum required to produce the results people want, and we hope that software people will figure out the rest.
None of the current generation of the "band" devices are in the finished category. I have tried the Basis B1, Jawbone up and my current device the Fitbit Flex.
The Basis was the most sensor packed bundle of the lot and that is a device with lot of promise - two major issues for me:
- I never got used to the fact that it needs to be in Snug contact with your skin 24/7 for all the sensors to work this can get tricky when you sleep (for example) and the device is on on too tight
- No vibrational alarm A device that senses when you go to sleep does not have a simple mechanism to wake you up smartly - just stupid.
The Jawbone up was an unmitigated disaster - should never have been released.
My current device is the Fitbit which seems to have gotten most of the stuff right, but I still have to tell it when I fall asleep and when I am woken up.
I also have the Aria Scale from fitbit.
As other commenters have echoed, the first device that will make it "totally frictionless" to record all the data will be a blockbuster.
My Ideal fitness device will also have a powerful camera that can take a fast snapshot of any food I eat, use magic algorithms to find a match to stuff known foodstuff (by using Image matching against a database of known foods) and automatically give me the calories and micro-nutirents of everything that I Eat/Drink.
Then we combine all this data with services such as WellnessFX & their Blood Markers...
Then we integrate implantable "micro-labs" that sample your blood 24/7...
> - I never got used to the fact that it needs to be in Snug contact with your skin 24/7 for all the sensors to work this can get tricky when you sleep (for example) and the device is on on too tight
I have a Basis B2 and my experience is the same. I really need the Basis because my pulse has been very erratic lately and it helps me monitor it so I don't overexert or stress myself. But the device is so tight, at least once a day I take it out just so my arm can "breathe" normally.
While it syncs over BT with my iPhone, it takes 3-4 tries to do it. I've just given up and sync with the cable and my computer. Another issue is that if my pulse goes over 100-110, it detects it as half the bpm (50-55), making me look way healthier than I am.
So ya, I'm with you on this. None of the devices are there yet. I'd pay $500 if all of the above are worked out. On the plus side, the sleep detection with Basis (especially REM phase) works surprisingly great.
The bit about taking a picture of food you are about to consume and reading/logging nutritional data might be closer to viability once smartphones get Kinnect-like 3D sensors, making it possible to read volume data. Google's [Project Tango](https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/) is one such initiative.
Does anyone know of any computer vision research into identifying food?
In other words, the point of collecting data about yourself should be to optimize yourself, especially fixing procrastination and other forms of akrasia like eating too much and moving too little. Sometimes just seeing your data is a nudge in that direction but in my opinion (did I mention my extreme bias as a cofounder of Beeminder) it mostly isn't.
I basically had the same problem with my Fitbit and Fuelband. I wrote a similar article/rant about this awhile back: https://medium.com/p/4dfd99a584d1
It's nuts how much manual stuff you have to do in order to get any use out of these things. These apps should be smart enough to know when I'm running and when I'm walking, when I'm sleeping and when I'm just sitting around. The hints are there. It's just a matter of capturing them.
I agree that the technology is not perfect and everything you want it to be but for 99% of the population who get no walking at all, it is a wake up call and helps a ton. I lost 20lbs in 6 months because of wearing fitbit and jawbone.
Anecdata: I've lost 60 pounds in 12 months, simply just using free apps to (A) record my weight each morning and show a moving average (B) identify what surprisingly-high-calorie foods and snacks I was consuming.
...And no, the bathroom scale is completely non-networked, my smartphone simply prompts me to tap in the reading every morning.
If your goal is to "lose weight", then forget activity-trackers, because your main tactic should be controlling the input side. It's far easier to not eat 200 calories than it is to burn those 200 calories off later at the gym. It's also cheaper than buying expensive techno-nostrums / shiny-toys.
I've been perfectly happy with my Fitbit Ultra for the past couple years, but I don't expect it to be anything more than a pedometer with a nice online dashboard.
It's a small motivational tool, that's all. Nobody needs it, but it's nice. I've lost 28 pounds fairly quickly, thanks to a combination of walking and calorie counting with MyFitnessPal (Fitbit's food database is inferior).
I think that is a good point. The author said he was walking/biking 10k a day, so he probably could use a whole different class for device. For the person who is struggling to get up to 10k steps a day, these devices are useful.
I do think they really need to improve durability. My wife is on her third fitbit flex in 6 months.
> Neither of the experiences felt seamless. I had to do way too much work myself.
This is the biggest problem with workout tracking IMO. You worked hard to generate that data through exercising, the device and/or app should be facilitating the data aggregation and meaning w/o the user noticing.
I made TheSquatRack to help fix this issue in the fitness tracking space. It's built upon the notion of workout routines being an analogy to programming, and enabling TSR to be able to execute/run user-made workouts and routines with multi-week progressions, modifications, automatic logging based on what was planned, and more. And naturally, share workouts, templates, routines, and meta-routines in a central searchable database users can browse, add to their training repository, and more.
Technology is moving fast, everyone seems to want to say "look at this data," but there is a lot less "here's what it means, here's common solutions people have found, and here's how to do it". TSR is the first thing I've seen that can work for the first-time gym-goer to elite athlete: giving everyone actional feedback on the data they generate.
The value of these things is correlating things and thanks to services like Human API or Exist, people will do the heavy lifting for you. I personally use Fitbit One and Basis, waiting for Amiigo to arrive, and, yes, I backed HealBe, too, although most people say it's a scam - I really need the unique data it provides. It's important to accept that none of those will be accurate. I personally can live with 20% off - some data is still better than no data, don't you agree?
>But at the end of the day I really don’t need an app to tell me that I ran 7k in the morning, walked 3k to and from work and biked five minutes to meet a friend for lunch. There is literally no value being added to my life. By none of these. This is the obvious stuff. Everyone remembers their activity during the day and I honestly don’t care if my “Fitbit friend” Tobias walked five minutes less or more than me.
I think what we're seeing is "wearable tech v1.0" where the marketing is super strong, but the product is "meh". It's probably the reason Apple is taking it's time to get into this market.
My prediction - FitBit will be the next MySpace; sell for a nice price tag to the greater fool, and then someone else will come in and dominant this market (Apple is my guess).
I remember MySpace sold for around a billion and pretty quickly after the deal inked a $1 billion dollar advertising agreement with AOL. Facebook ate its lunch, but I'm not sure Murdoch lost that much on MySpace.
I have had a Jawbone UP for about 8 months, and I've actually found it much more useful for sleep tracking than activity tracking. The smart alarm feature is, well, smart and I do feel less groggy in the morning.
That being said, I would still like Apple to get into this market. I know that if they were, they would do it right the first time around.
I purchased a Jawbone UP about 4 months ago specifically for the sleep tracking and smart alarms. I've never felt the need to use it as a fitness tracker because I'm naturally working out more and feeling healthier after consistently getting a good night's sleep.
I'm excited to see what Apple comes up with (though overall I'm not a fan) and I'm also looking forward to the Razer Nabu. I feel like the current offerings in the area are V0.* and they'll be the first 1.0s.
I bought a Fitbit Flex about a month ago. I am totally disappointed.
It has lots of bugs. The sleep tracking (which was the main reason I bought it for) is just a very subjective/guess-like tracking mechanism. I wake up many times during the night but if my arm doesn't move much, according to the device I was sleeping. Not sure how they can improve that part.
Now it simply stopped reporting my sleeps. I tell it I'm going to sleep, then in the morning I tell it I am awake and when I sync the data it has nothing in the sleeping log.
The steps also seem very inaccurate. Sometimes I wake up with hundreds or thousands of steps (maybe I am a sleepwalker?)
>>>Sometimes I wake up with hundreds or thousands of steps (maybe I am a sleepwalker?)
It actually sounds like either it's not going into "sleep mode" correctly or it's coming out of it for some reason. I have a flex and eventually got into the habit of checking as I approach sleep that it's still on sleep mode.
If it does come in and out of sleep mode without action on your part, that sounds like a defective device.
My favorite thing was that I supposedly walk 200+ steps while brushing my teeth. Nope. Again, we are all beta testers. It's like as if we'd be driving cars that routinely fall apart every 50 miles -- and claim we drove 500 miles.
I had exactly the same experience. Owned 1-gen UP - total fail, the product was not ready for the market. Owned 3 1-gen Fuelbands. All of them broke down at some point.
The problem I see with activity trackers is that they collect your data, but in return they do not give you qualitative suggestions how to improve your behaviour. Suggestions that made sense. The data is becoming useless. I hardly ever checked my Fuel stats during 2 years of having Fuelbands.
And I want to know myself:) Atm I have all sorts of apps that tracks activity: Moves, Human, Breeze, Rove, Fitbit and etc. Hardly getting any value from them at the moment. I hope in the long term I will. Long-term investment.
I had a pretty similar experience with the Nike FuelBand I bought. I haven't had any hardware problems, but I couldn't get over the feeling of having a hard plastic wristband on all the time. The value just wasn't there to offset that. Now it just sits on the charger on my desk, not doing much of anything. These days I mostly just use the Moves app on my phone which gives me the number of steps I walked and total distance, which is all I really care about anyway. It'll take a really integrated/seamless experience to get me to try another band.
I love this post because as an entrepreneur in the IoT space, I agree with most of what is being said. I've tried to come up with value-adding use cases for quantified-self devices as well as smart watches and most of what I've come up with has been very weak. It could be that I just haven't thought about it enough, but for most of these wrist bands, they don't seem really helpful in providing you better data than a phone. That coupled with the amount data massaging you need to do makes for a very poor experience.
I have exchanged to 5 Ups and all of them DOA. Since I bought from Amazon I cannot get refund from Jawbone. Now I have my Up sitting in the draw for months...
I'm looking forward to getting a fitbit one soon. I have chose it because I don't like having anything on my wrists/arms, and it also should be more accurate since it sits in my pocket and not on my arms which may move when I'm not walking. I read you can also put it in your sock to track bicycling. You can't do that with a phone.
I find the M7 processor in my iPhone 5S to do 90% of what I want. The only other time I care is when I'm directly using gym equipment, and I use an old polar watch for that (since it interoperates with the machines and hrm strap).
One solution is to use an aggregator like NudgeYourself.com - they do a great job taking any trackers you use and aggregating the data. So you can have Fitbit and Runkeeper and they'll stay automatically in sync.
[+] [-] sown|12 years ago|reply
I used disparate set pedometers, activity monitors, food and calorie loggers, and it was kind of a pain. But I did use all of those, and I lost more than 100 pounds using those tools, which are important. Others can get by without them. But why make it harder on yourself by having less information?
I now have a FitBit Flex -- and most of these tools are in the same site/app/device. It's great! Compared to the old set of tools I had, this is way easier.
The difference is that the market fragment of customers that are represented by people like me is that we are serious about fitness, and doing a few clicks or taps isn't so bad. Especially compared to my previous tools of notebooks, spread sheets, and bookmarked websites.
Having data every day is not only useful, but also vital. Even one day of eating the wrong things can wipe out several days worth of work
I'm serious, I'm determined, and aggressive to meet my goals and those old tools and the new easier tools help me out. A few taps won't stop me! Now that I'm going through these last 15-25 pounds, I need all the help I can get and the challenges I had in the past towards meeting these goals is dwarfed. by new challenges.
If you're serious, these tools are useful. If you are more casual, you may not find them so helpful.
[+] [-] IgorPartola|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brakenshire|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jzwinck|12 years ago|reply
This is quite similar when you put it the way you did: the hardware exists, it is intentionally stripped down to provide the theoretical minimum required to produce the results people want, and we hope that software people will figure out the rest.
[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SufficientlySmartCompiler
[2] http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856
[+] [-] suprgeek|12 years ago|reply
The Basis was the most sensor packed bundle of the lot and that is a device with lot of promise - two major issues for me:
- I never got used to the fact that it needs to be in Snug contact with your skin 24/7 for all the sensors to work this can get tricky when you sleep (for example) and the device is on on too tight
- No vibrational alarm A device that senses when you go to sleep does not have a simple mechanism to wake you up smartly - just stupid.
The Jawbone up was an unmitigated disaster - should never have been released.
My current device is the Fitbit which seems to have gotten most of the stuff right, but I still have to tell it when I fall asleep and when I am woken up. I also have the Aria Scale from fitbit.
As other commenters have echoed, the first device that will make it "totally frictionless" to record all the data will be a blockbuster.
My Ideal fitness device will also have a powerful camera that can take a fast snapshot of any food I eat, use magic algorithms to find a match to stuff known foodstuff (by using Image matching against a database of known foods) and automatically give me the calories and micro-nutirents of everything that I Eat/Drink.
Then we combine all this data with services such as WellnessFX & their Blood Markers...
Then we integrate implantable "micro-labs" that sample your blood 24/7...
Then we add in genetic data from 23andMe...
[+] [-] chime|12 years ago|reply
I have a Basis B2 and my experience is the same. I really need the Basis because my pulse has been very erratic lately and it helps me monitor it so I don't overexert or stress myself. But the device is so tight, at least once a day I take it out just so my arm can "breathe" normally.
While it syncs over BT with my iPhone, it takes 3-4 tries to do it. I've just given up and sync with the cable and my computer. Another issue is that if my pulse goes over 100-110, it detects it as half the bpm (50-55), making me look way healthier than I am.
So ya, I'm with you on this. None of the devices are there yet. I'd pay $500 if all of the above are worked out. On the plus side, the sleep detection with Basis (especially REM phase) works surprisingly great.
[+] [-] rev087|12 years ago|reply
Does anyone know of any computer vision research into identifying food?
[+] [-] jfoster|12 years ago|reply
Are you sure that you want something sampling your blood all of the time? I'd rather enter stuff manually and lose a bit of accuracy.
[+] [-] dreeves|12 years ago|reply
1. Self-charging. The Misfit Shine gets close by using a watch battery that lasts months.
2. Self-syncing.
3. API, of course, so it's easy to automatically do things with the data (like send it to http://beeminder.com !).
4. Waterproof, so I don't have to remember to take it off in the shower.
Basically I want something I can wear and never have to think about at all.
More generally, I think what's missing (extreme bias warning) with Quantified Self is that it needs to evolve toward Programmable Self: http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/01/programmable-self-motivati...
In other words, the point of collecting data about yourself should be to optimize yourself, especially fixing procrastination and other forms of akrasia like eating too much and moving too little. Sometimes just seeing your data is a nudge in that direction but in my opinion (did I mention my extreme bias as a cofounder of Beeminder) it mostly isn't.
[+] [-] Jemaclus|12 years ago|reply
It's nuts how much manual stuff you have to do in order to get any use out of these things. These apps should be smart enough to know when I'm running and when I'm walking, when I'm sleeping and when I'm just sitting around. The hints are there. It's just a matter of capturing them.
Annoying.
[+] [-] euphemize|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satishmreddy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terr_|12 years ago|reply
...And no, the bathroom scale is completely non-networked, my smartphone simply prompts me to tap in the reading every morning.
If your goal is to "lose weight", then forget activity-trackers, because your main tactic should be controlling the input side. It's far easier to not eat 200 calories than it is to burn those 200 calories off later at the gym. It's also cheaper than buying expensive techno-nostrums / shiny-toys.
[+] [-] TillE|12 years ago|reply
It's a small motivational tool, that's all. Nobody needs it, but it's nice. I've lost 28 pounds fairly quickly, thanks to a combination of walking and calorie counting with MyFitnessPal (Fitbit's food database is inferior).
[+] [-] NoPiece|12 years ago|reply
I do think they really need to improve durability. My wife is on her third fitbit flex in 6 months.
[+] [-] mkal_tsr|12 years ago|reply
This is the biggest problem with workout tracking IMO. You worked hard to generate that data through exercising, the device and/or app should be facilitating the data aggregation and meaning w/o the user noticing.
I made TheSquatRack to help fix this issue in the fitness tracking space. It's built upon the notion of workout routines being an analogy to programming, and enabling TSR to be able to execute/run user-made workouts and routines with multi-week progressions, modifications, automatic logging based on what was planned, and more. And naturally, share workouts, templates, routines, and meta-routines in a central searchable database users can browse, add to their training repository, and more.
Technology is moving fast, everyone seems to want to say "look at this data," but there is a lot less "here's what it means, here's common solutions people have found, and here's how to do it". TSR is the first thing I've seen that can work for the first-time gym-goer to elite athlete: giving everyone actional feedback on the data they generate.
[+] [-] kolev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ndomin|12 years ago|reply
Exactly why I've yet to buy one or even try one.
[+] [-] mbesto|12 years ago|reply
My prediction - FitBit will be the next MySpace; sell for a nice price tag to the greater fool, and then someone else will come in and dominant this market (Apple is my guess).
[+] [-] cma|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethnt|12 years ago|reply
That being said, I would still like Apple to get into this market. I know that if they were, they would do it right the first time around.
[+] [-] rok3|12 years ago|reply
I'm excited to see what Apple comes up with (though overall I'm not a fan) and I'm also looking forward to the Razer Nabu. I feel like the current offerings in the area are V0.* and they'll be the first 1.0s.
[+] [-] goshx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patmcc|12 years ago|reply
It actually sounds like either it's not going into "sleep mode" correctly or it's coming out of it for some reason. I have a flex and eventually got into the habit of checking as I approach sleep that it's still on sleep mode.
If it does come in and out of sleep mode without action on your part, that sounds like a defective device.
[+] [-] mgoesche|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] websirnik|12 years ago|reply
The problem I see with activity trackers is that they collect your data, but in return they do not give you qualitative suggestions how to improve your behaviour. Suggestions that made sense. The data is becoming useless. I hardly ever checked my Fuel stats during 2 years of having Fuelbands.
And I want to know myself:) Atm I have all sorts of apps that tracks activity: Moves, Human, Breeze, Rove, Fitbit and etc. Hardly getting any value from them at the moment. I hope in the long term I will. Long-term investment.
[+] [-] justjohn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeblau|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radiorental|12 years ago|reply
I don't care if my Fitbit flex isn't the most accurate device, it's helping me put some quantification where none was needed a few years ago.
When tracking my intake, I don't care that I have to look up how many calories that Founder's breakfast stout is, now I actually know is 260.
I've gone from 'not looking at my credit card statements' to 'balancing my checking account'.
Knowing roughly where you are is half the battle.
[+] [-] nathancahill|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamxiaoz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattwad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomasien|12 years ago|reply