Quantify me: digital products for the quantified self

Data is the currency of the information age, but statistics aren’t reserved for benchmarking the performance of computers and smartphones. A growing number of people are exploring new ways to keep track of every aspect of their daily lives: from the steps they take and the meals they eat to their everyday conversations and working hours. The “quantified self” movement is an emergent trend of increasingly connected consumers, and some of the technology industry’s biggest players have begun designing products with this data-driven mentality in mind.

One of the leading personalities behind the quantified self movement is Nicholas Felton, a product designer and developer who first played around with quantification with an app called Daytum. Daytum is a mobile app and web service that allows users to catalog any pieces of data they chose, with user-defined categories and handy exporting functionality. Felton drew from his experience designing personal “annual reports” of his yearly metrics, which beautifully illustrate every facet of his daily life and are available for purchase in print. Felton took his data visualization experience to work at Facebook, where he spearheaded the first Facebook Timeline design to collate more aspects of users’ activity and behaviors. But Felton was just getting started.

Last year, Felton and a development partner released Reporter, an iOS app that carries Daytum’s self-quantification torch into a new iOS 7 era. Reporter periodically prompts iOS users to take a brief quiz about their day, asking user-defined questions as broad-ranging as the last thing they ate to whether or not they’re working. Reporter leverages the M7 motion coprocessor on iPhone 5s and M8 on iPhone 6 to log steps taken, the microphone to catalog ambient noise, and the GPS antenna to determine approximate location. In short, Reporter is a quantified lifer’s dream: gorgeous visualization assisted by the iPhone’s situationally aware hardware components. The next generation of quantification apps will be empowered to do even more—Apple’s and Google’s new investments in connective services and frameworks for their latest operating systems will bring quantified life services to the next level.

Wearables like Fitbit and Nike FuelBand may have led the charge into wearable fitness tracking, but hardware that connects to mobile has much more utilitarian potential. Google Fit and HealthKit democratize access to medical information and allow users to monitor health metrics for themselves, using a growing ecosystem of commercially accessible medical equipment. Both mobile platforms will make their rich data available to third-party apps through HealthKit and Google Fit, meaning forthcoming apps following in Reporter’s footsteps will have access to all-new data around caloric intake and burn, heart rate, and more. Meanwhile, HomeKit and Google’s expanding connected home ecosystem with Nest will allow third-party apps to better understand users’ homes and their behaviors within them. Nest already understands when users are home and away, and memorizes their preferences for future utility optimization. These quantified apps and services will better understand users’ histories and their at-home behaviors.

The quantified self movement is symptomatic of our data-conscious age, and is only becoming more fervently supported as technology products assist its adherents in new ways. Embracing self-quantification serves Google and Apple brand interests, as they seek partnerships with connective hardware services and encourage devotion to one mobile platform over another. But these services have the altruistic underpinning of helping regular consumers better understand their behaviors and themselves. Cataloging one’s daily habits at a macro level can help users better improve themselves and become healthier, happier, and more productive. And now, they don’t have to be a professional data visualization designer to do it.