Quantified Self Business Models
Gary Wolf
Last Tuesday I received an invitation from Esther Dyson and
Jen McCabe to attend a small, private workshop on the business side of
user-generated health. The workshop was to be held the very next day. Despite
this short notice, more than 30 people showed up, some of whom flew across the
country to attend. Their question was: how could they make money from this?
I think it's an important question. Business models are interesting as an informational signal: each model represents a theory about how the future of self-tracking will unfold. I am working on a post that maps out some of the commercial territory I see being explored by the more than 200 companies that have been mentioned at the QS Show&Tell meetings or here on our blog. But before too many days go by, I wanted to share some of the discussion that took place at IDEO last week.
The session began with McCabe of ContagionHealth
describing her company, whose first product is a social game that allows people
to exchange exercise challenges. What on the surface looks like a fun diversion
and micro-motivator is actually an insertion strategy for new tools of mapping
human psychology and social influence, McCabe explained. The group is already
experimenting with segmenting users (for instance, into "doms" and
"subs" according to whether they prefer influencing or being
influenced). This is invisible to the user, who sees only an invitation to play
with their friends. Right now, McCabe and her partner Andrey Petrov hope to make money
by licensing the platform to employee wellness programs.
While ContagionHealth has a viral strategy, Vicki Saunders of Zazengo described a corporate
approach. Zazengo is a set of tools designed to allow large organizations to
orchestrate and track campaigns among their employees and supporters. Zazengo's
key tool is the "Actvertisement," - this is a message delivered to
some targeted subset of employees, usually through the company intranet. The
actvertisement urges the employee to take some specific action, associated with
the company's goals. (As part of a sustainability campaign, for instance,
employees can be urged to turn off their computer when not in use.) By creating
detailed feedback that tracks employee and departmental contributions at any
level of the corporate hierarchy, Zazengo can be used to stage competitions and
orchestrate rewards.
WallMart is currently one of Zazengo's clients. WallMart started using the platform for sustainability campaigns, and now is beginning to use it to orchestrate health and wellness campaigns. One of the interesting points that Vicki made as that the online component of these campaigns is strengthened by the face-to-face meetings that WallMart holds with its employees every day. Individual tracking, here, is understood as part of a collective contribution to a corporate goal.
While making money depends on having a good business model, there's no business to model unless something is happening that people like and want. Why do people track things? What kinds of systems and messages will be useful for people tracking their health?
NYC QS Show&Tell Heads To Brooklyn on Wed. Mar 31st!
Steve Dean
Daniel Navetta and his team at ApKmedia are putting the final coat of paint on their newly renovated loft space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that will become a hub for talented and ambitious filmmaker, artists, musicians and (I add) self-quantifiers. Their space will host photo shoots, video shoots, artist "micro-shows," album listening parties, creative community dinners and Show&Tells like Quantified Self.
Help us spread the word and get folks from Brooklyn who are doing any kind of self-tracking projects. Talk to artists, hackers, engineers, scientists, students and tell them to come share their work with our group in Greenpoint on the night of Wednesday, Mar 31st.Sneak Peak: Last December I saw a fascinating project at NYU - ITP by Mustafa Bağdatlı called bed_data that uses a force sensors matrix to detect pressure on the bed to understand how your bed sees you while you are sleep. Mustafa will present this project along with a mood-tracking garment.
RSVP and bring your self-tracking projects to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Mike Kirkwood on Open Standards for Personal Data
Gary Wolf
[The] goal is to have a microsyntax that allows applications and devices and share streams of information.... Multiple things can come into one person's stream,and we will not be tied to one device or application as we are today.This is an excellent introduction to a crucial topic for anybody who is thinking about building mobile tools to help people gather and analyze their personal data.
A Remarkable Life Logging Project by Ben Lipkowitz
Gary Wolf
With apologies for the slow pace of getting these videos posted to the web site, today I bring you a video of a mind-blowing presentation by Ben Lipkowitz of his life-logging project at the last QS Show&Tell. As usual, this is a raw documentary record, made on the fly, so don't be surprised by the low quality of the recording or by Ben's face bobbing in and out of the scene. Ben started self-tracking when he wondered how much time he actually spent doing his roommate's dishes. He estimated that he spent an hour a day. (The true amount, he learned, was about 20 minutes.) This led him to track more things. This led him to track everything. Ben considers this project a scientific investigation, but is a type of science inspired by Buckminster Fuller, aka "Guinea Pig B," rather than by a more conventional academic tradition.
It is easy to imagine somebody watching this video and saying: "well, that's a full scale geek-out that has nothing to do with me." But I think this would be an error. Ben uses data to find out details about himself, such as how he sleeps. He also uses data to figure out problems in his social life, such as whether the distribution of housework is reasonable. While its true that Ben's method of data gathering is unusable by most people, the type of questions he's asking and the conviction that these questions are answerable are a preview of the coming age of self-quantification.
Has Self-Tracking Changed You?
Gary Wolf
Do you have a story about how your self-tracking project has affected your life? If so, I'd like to hear it.I'm working on a long magazine story about the Quantified Self, much more detailed than the short essay published in Wired last year. ("Know Thyself: Tracking Every Facet of Life")
For this story I'm getting deeply into the history and future of self-tracking, and trying to expose something of the effect it is having, and can have, on our notion of what self-knowledge means. I'm interested in any personal story you might have about how self-tracking affected your behavior, habits, self-concept, or relationship with others.
You can post in the comments if you like, but the best way to reach me directly is through email: gary@aether.com.
First Boston QS Show&Tell Meeting!
Gary Wolf
Please join organizer Michael Nagle and the pioneering members of the new Boston Quantified Self group at their first Show&Tell on Wednesday, March 3. Full details here:Quantified Self Boston
Michael and some collaborators have started a collective of community scientists called sprout, where the first Show&Tell is being hosted. You can find out more about sprout on their web site. Here's an excerpt:
It is always fun to be around the first time something interesting happens.sprout is a collective of community scientists united by a passion for playful experimentation and a desire to become better learners, teachers, and doers. We design tools to collect and visualize data and reveal chances for deep engagement with the scientific side of everyday life.
We are working to become better facilitators of our own and each other's learning, with a focus on sharing and documenting the projects we work on and the skills and understanding we acquire.
We want science to be a cultural activity. You can be a waiter from 9-5, jam with your friends at night, and still call yourself a musician. But you can't do the same for science, yet. Through sprout's future educational programs and soon-to-be-public labspace, we want to build a community of everyday experimentalists and open up the resources needed to support independent learning.
There is obviously a great group of self-quantifiers in the Boston area. The Boston QS Show&Tell is going to be fantastic, so show up if you can.
Dan Meyer's Quantified Year
Alexandra Carmichael
Dan Meyer's 2009 Annual Report from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.
High school math teacher Dan Meyer put together this fast-paced, compelling look at his year in numbers. Thanks to David Rosenman of Mayo Clinic for sending this in!
How To Measure and Maximize Creative Thoughts
Alexandra Carmichael
Do you want to be more creative? Justin Wehr does, and he sent in this question for the QS advisory board.----------
Name: Justin Wehr
Purpose: My objective is to measure creative thoughts so I can figure out how to maximize them.
Variables tracked: I have some variables related to this, but not enough. For example, I have a notebook I carry around with me so I can write something down every time I think of/hear something interesting that I want to remember. So I think I could crudely measure creative thoughts with something like "number of lines written in notebook per unit time". However, I do not track time spent reading or which lines written in the notebook occurred during reading. But my hope is that I could set up an experiment that would not be too complicated -- that is the advice I would like from the QS advisors.
Question: How do I set up an experiment to determine when I have have the most creative thoughts ... when I am reading, when I am thinking, or when I do intermittent periods of reading and thinking? What should I measure, how should I measure it, is it practical, and how do I analyze the results?
See what Gary Wolf of Quantified Self and Gary King of Harvard had to say...
Maren Connary On The Quantified Scrapbook
Gary Wolf
At the the Bay Area QS Show&Tell #11, Maren Connary gave a follow-up talk that explored how her detailed life log, which she keeps on paper in thick binders, could be enhanced by a digital life logging system. You can't see much of what she is talking about in this video, because the images are on screen and the room is dark, but Maren gives a very good introduction that talks about scrap-booking, archiving, nostalgia, and the enhancement of personal memory. (Introduction: minute 0:00 to 3:00)
I keep something I call "the archive. It's 19 volume analog life log, it's basically a scrapbook on crack. I work in health care so I have my own PHR, which is a personal health record, so I have all of my health information in alphabetical order, organized.And at the end, there is an excellent Q&A, in which Maren answers interesting questions about how she uses her archive. Anybody who is involved with building life logging tools can learn from this conversation. (Q&A: minute 7:00 to 11:00)
Question: Is there any natural limit to how much of this stuff you put in? If you could do it faster, would you just do more?
Answer: Oh, God! If I could do it faster would I do more? I think it has to do with the data selection. What data are you collecting? Are you collecting information education. On my health? It has to do with what you select as your channels.
Q: Do you ever freak out on anniversarizing? Look back, say, five years on the same date or anything like that?
A: I use it to check back in a relationship context to make sure I'm not making the same mistakes multiple times.
Q: "How is that working?
A: "I actually... my memory is based on the images in the binder. I will remember this page so it is a memory trigger
Q: "You are saying you are using the binders as an index rather than data storage.
A: "It's both, because my memory is not as precise as what's in the archive. The archive is date stamped. I can't remember exactly the date, but I will remember the events that were happening around that date, so I can look back and find exactly what the dates. One of these pages has been used in a court of law...
Results of the Personal Informatics Survey
Ian Li
In the summer of 2009, I posted a survey of personal informatics tools on The Quantified Self, Flowing Data, and forums at personal informatics sites like Slife and MoodJam. Many people participated describing their experiences using existing tools to track and reflect on personal information. The survey helped us develop a model to describe personal informatics systems (Figure 1). The model is a series of five stages (Preparation, Collection, Integration, Reflection, and Action) with four properties: problems in earlier stages cascade to later stages; stages are iterative; they are user-driven and/or system-driven; and they are uni-faceted and/or multi-faceted. From these properties, we suggest that personal informatics systems should 1) be designed in a holistic manner across the stages; 2) support iteration between stages; 3) apply an appropriate balance of automated technology and user control within each stage to facilitate the user experience; and 4) provide support for associating multiple facets of people's lives to enrich the value of systems. In the rest of this post, I will talk about our findings in further detail and discuss how the model can guide the evaluation and design of personal informatics systems.
Figure 1. The stage-based model of personal informatics systems and its four properties.
(Full report after the jump.)