Sensing DevicesMarch 28, 2011

1.Why the fascination with sensing devices?

2.How do we track activity?

3.Where does my project fit?

1.Why the fascination with sensing devices?

2.How do we track activity?

3.Where does my project fit?

Sensing.Presence. Understanding. Improving.

Our need to understand ourselves is not new.

Aristotle.“But if life itself is good and pleasant (...) and if one who sees is conscious that he sees, one who hears that he hears, one who walks that he walks, (...) whenever we perceive, we are conscious that we perceive, and whenever we think, we are conscious that we think, and to be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious that we exist...

Rene Descartes. Cogito Ergo Sum.

We strive toward an objective analysis of our surroundings in order to understand our shortcomings and get better.

In 1883, Nietzsche described the idea of the Übermensch/Superman as a goal for humanity.

Nietzsche's Overman or Superman is a human being who generates values in accordance with data that he collects from his environment. He employs his intuition (regarding good and evil) to form values and then tests them empirically and without prejudice. That which works, promotes his welfare and happiness and helps him realize his full range of potentials - is good. And everything - including values and the Superman himself - everything - is transitory, contingent, replaceable, changeable and subject to the continuous scrutiny of Darwinian natural selection. His values are: self-realization, survival in strength, and continual re-invention. Overcoming is not only a process or a mechanism - it constitutes the reason to live.

A 100 years later, Marshall McLuhan analyzes the relationship between us and our surroundings and proclaims that “the medium is the message”.

We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us. - Marshall McLuhan

We’ve always used tools to capture data about our selves.

We innovate and improvise for accuracy.

Our needs for tracking evolve to keep pace with our smart tools.

We follow a path that starts with curiosity...

Then focuses on practical needs...

And ends with the discovery of new information that not only helps us perform tasks faster and better. but anticipates our future needs.

We’ve started whole trends in product design around the tools that can track us, and we even came up with a word to describe the drive towards an objective learning of oneself - the Quantified Self.

The Quantified Self as a term and as a group was formed in 2007 when Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf, former Wired contributors, began looking at some new practices that seemed, loosely, to belong together: life logging, personal genomics, location tracking, biometrics. These new tools were being developed for many different reasons, but all of them had something in common: they added a computational dimension to ordinary existence.

1.Why the fascination with sensing devices?

2.How do we track activity?

3.Where does my project fit?

An odometer for measuring distance was first described by Vitruvius around 27 and 23 BC. The Roman empire needed to measure the empire’s roads and thus understand the size of the provinces.

We also have evidence of a Chinese odometer in the form of a mechanical carriage. At one li, a mechanical-driven wooden figure strikes a drum. When ten li is traversed, another wooden figure would strike a bell with its mechanical-operated arm.

Pedometers were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. The modern-day pedometer is commonly attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

Today pedometers come in thousands of packages and within products, helping us measure our all-day activity.

Tracking is a powerful tool. Measuring accomplishments makes heroes out of all of us.

What we trackType of activityLevel/FrequencyTime/DurationLocation

Many ways to measure activity.

Timer. Hundred pushups app.

Accelerometer. Philips DirectLife activity tracker.

GPS. Ski Tracks.

Skin temperature sensor. Bodybugg armband.

Pressure sensor. Wii Balance Board.

Camera, depth sensor and mic. MS Kinect.

Radio Frequency. EpicMix.

What sets products apart?

The best products tap into existing human behaviors around motivation.

Let’s take a look at Nike+.

When it first came out in 2006, Nike+iPod paired a pedometer with music to create a platform for running motivation.

As the platform expanded, it introduced new motivational elements, such as goals,...

...challenges,...

..and a personal training program aka Nike+ Coach.

There are many competitors in this space, each with their own take on motivation.

Adidas focuses on personalized coaching to help users get better and faster for specific race events.

Polar invests in a series of heart rate watches and emphasizes staying in your preferred cardio zone.

Garmin combines tracking with GPS, encouraging detailed analysis of each completed run.

RunKeeper creates a single home for runners, hikers, cyclists and any other outdoor activity.

Nokia, which launched a similar tool, Sports Tracker, has a harder time distinguishing their product.

Beyond running, every part of our life, active and inactive, has been at the center of an explosion of interest in tracking.

Fitbit pairs walking with sleep tracking for a 24-hr picture of your day.

Zeo focuses on analyzing and improving your sleep cycle, by displaying the amount of time in a deep, restful sleep.

The Withings scale records your daily weight and even tweets it to engage the principles of peer pressure.

Mint’s Goal feature lets users track their progress against a longer term goal and provides reminder emails to help users stay on track.

TripIt recognizes itineraries in a user’s email address and automatically imports the trip information, making it the one-stop travel destination.

CurrentCost analyzes electricity use and displays a bar graph of relative use over the course of 24 hours, motivating users with a cost estimate.

The Wattson clock/electrical tracking device serves as a beautifully designed clock, which also displays watts usage and cost.

As more and more sensors are embedded in the devices we already own - smartphones, tablets, we become sources of constant activity streams.

In the last few years, location has moved to the forefront of experimentation for tracking user behavior.

Like activity tracking, location-based products followed the same trajectory. From the magic of awareness...

..through the manual process for humanizing geo-data...

..the delight of identifying and matching your location, along with that of your friends...

..nearby recommendations...

Yelp Fandango

..and Foursquare’s latest smart invitations based on friends and local specials...

..to immediate friend groupings based on pairing location with other sensory data.

As our sensors get smarter, they also become:

Invisible

Immediate

Insightful

1.Why the fascination with sensing devices?

2.How do we track activity?

3.Where does my project fit?

PersonalGame

FunctionalAnalysis

IndividualInsightSimple

Text-basedActivity

ConsistencyRoutine

SharedTool/ServiceFunProjectionSocialRecommendationComplexVisualLocationImprovementSurprise

Appendix

For iOS, there are hundreds of fitness tracking devices, which use GPS and/or the accelerometer to capture data.

Android is close behind.

We strive toward an objective analysis of our surroundings in order to understand our shortcomings and get better.