One Man’s Journey with the Quantified Self

Albert Sun of the New York Times considered himself a fairly active individual, given his propensity to ride his bike to work, as well as working out two or three times a week. When he set out to test 11 different wearable activity trackers though, he found that most of the devices told him he was inactive for the vast majority of his day. This is fairly common with modern employees who spend most of their day at a desk.

Sun describes his activity with devices from Fitbit, Misfit Wearables, Jawbone, Basis, and Body Media. Throughout his research Sun noticed that many of the devices were not actively crediting him for movements such as tapping his legs to music at his desk, and only the Basis and Body Media devices accurately credited him for his bike riding activities.

Sun critiques his experience by noting that he found the knowledge of his day-to-day activity more useful than the precision of the figures during specific physical activities. This gave him insight into the drastic increase in activity over the weekends versus weekdays (16,000 steps versus 6,000). Sun did however notice a need for helping users digest the data that is coming out of these devices. And notes that until that is more accurately done, in-person motivation by groups at gyms or friends may prove to be more successful.

Read the source article at The New York Times.

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