Show HN: Nudge – Klout for healthy living | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Nudge – Klout for healthy living

nudgeyourself.com

23 pointsmacgambill38 comments

Awesome work.

I have been working on an open source API to accomplish similar things (specifically just re: aggregation of data from disparate sources): https://github.com/jdjkelly/quantify

It's Rails + Postgres, and so far aggregates meal, weight, and sleep data from Withings and Fitbit - but I've been focussed on building out a framework to easily aggregate many, many more sources.

Maybe we could find a project to work on together - contact is in my profile.

I believe Tictrac (https://www.tictrac.com/) is working on a similar system

Yeah there are some great platforms out there like TicTrac and Runkeeper but the value in our platform is certainly going to be the algorithm. Aggregating data for personal use is something those companies are doing well, but we thought there was an interesting niche in regards to quantified selfers being able to compare each other, independent of lifestyles or tracking applications.

Thanks! I hadn't heard of this. Playing around with it for a few minutes, and it strikes me as, well, _complicated_. I think that's one of the difficulties in this space - just being able to reduce, reduce, reduce so much data into powerful, impactful decision making.

We are attempting to aggregate and index people's health tracking data using our proprietary algorithm into one healthy living score. Would love feedback on UX as well as general concept.

Thank you, Mac

Hey Mac - great looking stuff. The marketability of a single healthy living score is pretty clear, but isn't it a fairly artificial and opaque approach to making an actual measurement? The measures inherent to the donut chart-y UI element that's part of your site's hero loop (appears to be hydration, nutrition, sleep, activity) looks more useful to me than the single score.

I think to an individual at the moment the segments MAY be more useful than the metric itself; however, the value of the metric becomes more apparent when comparing individuals or populations. I know I get really excited about the prospect of being able to better index cities, states, etc. That is really interesting observation though.

The "metric" in this case is a score contrived using your proprietary algorithm. The value I read you describing appears more relevant to you/others interested in measuring populations. It doesn't seem especially helpful to the individual. To imagine one person say, "hey, I'm a 41, you're a 36" sounds like personal vanity metrics.

It's like two people comparing their BMIs - it doesn't tell a lot. I do see your app being potentially _very_ valuable in being able to tell individuals when their behaviors are or are not in line with vetted guidelines, or _nudge_ (heyo!) them to do healthful things at a rhythm in line with their best days.

I once worked on a payments platform whose viability depended on mass adoption. One of the reasons we failed, I believe, was due to being more focused on feeding data to merchants and banks vs. providing value to the consumers who were the actual ultimate hurdle to adoption.

Yeah that is a great point. Funny enough, the original platform we launched about 18 months ago was geared exclusively for corporate wellness, but after reading the market we realized there was a significant niche here in comparison amongst friends using different tracking applications.

I say all this because I think we realized even B2B platforms need to have consumer appeal to be successful. I think once we are able to integrate more platform and build and more social hooks, it will be more appealing to users. Love your feedback though - think you have some wonderful points.

I like the idea and the overall design but on the 'Log' page the top circles are a little confusing. I was trying to tap on them initially and it took me a few minutes to realize that they just showed the status. If they were different then the rest in some way it might make it more obvious.

I would also love Fitbit integration. I know a lot of people who have them (myself included) and because I would still have to use two apps might prevent me from using Nudge long term.

Yeah, great to hear someone else mention the logging circles - will definitely talk to the team about that.

Fitbit is definitely on our list of integrations and we are trying to integrate as quickly as we can. Once you sign up we can keep you posted with upcoming releases.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

This doesn't integrate with enough things, and there isn't a way to delete my account, which I definitely want to do if you're not going to support any of the trackers I already use.

To be honest, a lot of the tracking apps already try to become the dashboard, and integrate with each other pretty well. I don't really see enough differentiation here to give me a reason to log into yet another thing.

We are focusing primarily on integrating more platforms in order to make the metric more relevant to everyone. Some platforms DO integrate other app; however, we are trying to aggregate data in a way that makes it easier to compare. Nudge will become more and more passive as we continue to integrate.

We have more on the way, so keep your eyes peeled! Thanks!

Didn't really address the fact that there isn't a way to delete my account. And I've already received a marketing email, so... now I really want to delete my account.

Which trackers do you sync with? Could you list them here, I think that would be helpful. I also found this helpful http://blog.nudgeyourself.com/health-tech-and-food-nerd-blog...

Currently Moves, RunKeeper, MapMyRun, MapMyRide, other MapMy's... have another coming really soon!

My problem with these health monitoring systems is similar to the problem the FDA had with 23andMe. It's one thing to collect data and present them in an easy to accessible way. But it is another to attempt to give out medical advice based on the data. How far are you planning on taking the data in terms of interpretation?

That's a great question. At this stage we are certainly not interested in becoming overtly "prescriptive" in any way. Our first focus is on providing a cool utility to avid health trackers to aggregate data from their apps and gadgets in one place.

I think the best call in most of these is to make it easy to interface with your doctor over. Might mean exposing yourself to more regulations, but seems like what would lead to the best outcomes.

Trying to signup it asks for my weight but doesn't say what unit of measurement is expected.

Unfortunately it is only in lbs right now - metric coming later this week though. Sorry for the inconvenience, but thanks for pointing that out!

To give my interpretation, I assumed it was free text, and that if I put a unit at the end it would pick it up. This could be quite neat if it set that unit as my default unit for recording in?

Also thanks for releasing this, I've been building something similar but not making much progress.

Great idea, I'm on board but would really like to know which apps/devices you integrate with before downloading. I figured if I scrolled down a bit there would be a list. Maybe I missed it somewhere?

Currently Moves, RunKeeper, MapMyRun, MapMyRide, other MapMy's... have another coming really soon!

Add UP to that and I'm in. They've got an open API now, I believe.

May be a small matter, but I feel the slogan "nudge yourself" to be a little ... odd. "Give yourself a nudge" sounds better to me. YMMV

Any chance you could integrate with the Sleep Cycle app?

Yes absolutely, we have reached out to them but haven't heard anything back yet unfortunately.

Do you really want to associate yourself with Klout?

I get that some people despise Klout, but it symbolises "one score to rule them all" (aka the mother of all online map-reduce) better than any other service I can think of, among a tech-savvy audience.

Also it's OT, but there are actually many positive aspects of Klout to businesses dealing with multiple accounts and thousands or millions of followers and interacting accounts. They are less applicable to individuals, which is why it can come across as a narcissistic "social media guru" gimmick.

You're doing something right. I have never been so well hydrated than when I used Nudge in an inter-office competition.

Any chance of Sleep as Android integration?

We have actually had a few people mention that recently and I definitely want to look more into it. How has your experience been with it?

I've been using the app for about a year and a half by now and it's been really great as an alarm (it detects and wakes you during light sleep). Plus it calculates sleep duration, which you could use in your app. I believe that the data are accessible as a .csv in the phone's SD card so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Fitbit has a reasonably good sleep API - as does Jawbone.

cool. we just started working on Jawbone, and hopefully will get around to fitbit in short order.

Metric system option would be nice too.

Yeah, we are working on that update right now. Hopefully will be releasing that within the next week.

Really appreciate the feedback!

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