Quantified Self revisited

It has been over 1.5 years since I immersed myself in the wonderful world of self-trackers and the Quantified Self movement. At the time I experimented with various trackers such as the Zeo sleep headband, the FitBit step counter, and various other trackers. I saw tracking technology as 'the other learning technology' that provides instant feedback on how we are doing on our goals. I saw it working for people who are able to direct their own learning. And I made predictions that it would go beyond health and fitness tracking in the next years.  (Read here what I learned from a year of tracking.) So, after all this time, let's have an update...

Quantified Self is still growing strong

The number of self-trackers is still growing, and that is largely due to the increasing amount of people using health and fitness trackers. (gengre Nike Fuelband, JawBone or FitBit). The Quantified Self movment is still out and about organizing meetup sessions all around the world where people answer the questions.

• What have I done?
• Why have I done it?
• What have I learned?

You can see videos of some of these sessions on the QuantifiedSelf web page. The past two years a global Quantified Self conference has been organised in Amsterdam, and another one is scheduled for May 2015.

Update on the trackers I explored

• FitBit: FitBit is still one of the most popular trackers. They have not been bought by another company (as some others have), and they have expanded their range of products to the FitBit Zip, One and Flex. Their trackers work great and will measure the steps you take, floors you climb and sleep. Their products are mature and just work. The great plus is their web site (and mobile apps) that are looking great and give a great overview of your collected data. They have also expanded into a 'smart scale' that automatically uploads your weight, BMI and fat percentage to the cloud. (I bought the competing WiThings scale that does the same - and no, I'm not uploading my weight to Facebook so don't bother looking...) 

• Zeo: I'm sad to report that the device that helped me the most has disappeared from the market. The Zeo sleep tracking headband is not more as the company went bankrupt :-( . The great thing about it was the automated coaching application to improve your sleep that I blogged about earlier. It is still a feature I'm missing in a lot of tracking products: tracking is one thing, but we really appreciate help actually DOING something with that data... Maybe the WiThings Aura will be a good replacement, but it first needs to become available... (should be soon)
• Lumosity "brain games": I played Lumosity games for over a year and saw my brain profile scores improving and had fun playing the games. But did that make me any smarter or did that keep my brain in shape? It was a question mark then and it is a question mark now. Lumosity is still around and has a massive amount of users. They set of games has expanded, and I'm still a subscriber of their service. But over the last year my scores don't vary much anymore. I think these games remain fun but the major benefit you get within the year you are playing. After that the improvements are hardly noticeable. 
• FluxStream: With all the data all these trackers collect, there is a need to store it all in one place and visualize the different data sets for interdependence etc. FluxStream was one of these initiatives, and it has turned open source together with the BodyTrack initiative from Carnegie Mellon. There is also a CommonSense dashbaord project that does similar things, but I haven't tried it out.
• MyBasis watch: The 'basis' watch was anticipated with great expectations in the world of the Quantified Selfers in 2012 because it included extra trackers such as hearth rate and skin conductance. It finally shipped after my year of experimentation due to patent and technical issues, but I bought and tried it out all the same. I have mixed feelings about the device. Yes, it is a very clever piece of hardware that monitors your steps, your hearth rate (tip: use it in meetings to track your pulse when certain people are speaking :-) ), skin temperature and perspiration, etc. The associated web site has a gamified approach that unlocks more habits you can monitor as you gain more points. They have recently updated their algorithms that now also includes BodyIQ and advanced sleep analysis. So with all these great features, what's the downside? If I wear the watch for more than 2 consecutive day and nights I get a rash on my skin. Somehow my skin and the sensors on the back of the watch aren't compatible so basis doesn't work for me.  Intel thought differently and they recently bought MyBasis.

• HapiFork: This is a funny new one I bought by pledging this project on the crowd-sourcing site KickStarter. Basically it is a fork (and yes, you can put the fork in your dish washer) so you use it for eating - at least I do. But when you eat to fast it starts buzzing and shaking to encourage you to eat slower. And if you are eating peas they shake right off your fork :-). HapiFork comes as all trackers with its own website dashboard and apps. It is one of the newer devices that are targeted to help people with very specific tasks. One I didn't buy or try is the smart tooth brush Kolibree that helps (children) brush better.

• The list of smart sensors is constantly growing. On the crowd sourcing site Indiegogo for example there were projects on automatic calorie intake devices (I didn't pledge for that one). 

The growing list of smart tracking devices is bringing the 'Internet of Things' closer to consumers everywhere. Wolfram announced the Wolfram Connected Devices project to include this data in queries.

Next: brain sensor headbands and wearable trackers

So what's the deal with my prediction tracking devices would move beyond fitness and health and into our clothes, our brains and our emotions?

Well... it still is happening, but at a much slower pace than I anticipated.
Here are some signs of what is coming

• OM shirt is an early sign that the Internet of Things is getting in our clothes. I didn't buy it because, well, I don't exercise that much so I can't make people in the fitness envy my smart biometric shirt when I don't go to the fitness... I don't look like the guy below in so many ways... Besides it is in pre-order status.

• BeyondVerbal: they are building software to detect emotion in your voice. Try out their beta! (requires flash)
• Some are reinventing toothbrushes, but sen.se is reinventing the concept of 'Big Mother'... Their tag line cleverly reads "the meaning of life" which makes me think more about Monty Python than anything else but I'm sure that's just me... As far as I understand the concept the 'mother' device connects with separate sensors called 'cookies' that you can attach to a variety of other objects so that mother becomes a multi-purpose tracker. Anyway, it looked cool, I have a gadget addiction and I had 199$ so I signed up to receive an early version... It should be there soon. (But than again, most of these crowdsourced projects arrive 'soon' but are delayed over a year in the end...)

• I'm really looking forward to a device or application that helps us make sense of the data and actually encourages us to change habits. In that perspective I pre-ordered (and paid) for the Autom weight coaching robot as an example of automated coaching. Alas, I still haven't received it and the last update on their website is dating 2012 so I think I will never see my money back... 
• It took a while, but they are coming! I'm talking about the new generation of easy to wear brain sensors. I've pledged two crowdfunding projects: the Mellon headband (delayed again), and the Muse headband that just started shipping after also much delay in production. I'll keep you posted on my Muse experience...