David Garcia, a dev lead at Facebook, got a chance to hack the NASDAQ button, using a cellphone and a few things from RadioShack (including what must have been gator clips since I don’t think he took apart the guts, just flipped a switch when the main circuit was completed… I’m totally assuming on that part). Neato. Result:

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http://chartsnthings.tumblr.com/

Nice new blog from an NYT graphics department reporter and data-journalist, Kevin Quealy. Lots of cool ‘behind the scenes’ work on how data gets into a graphic that gets onto nytimes.com or the paper version.

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I can’t wait to turn my kitchen table into a skatepark. Literal bowls. Whoa.

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Introduction

I got my Nike+ Fuelband more than a month ago. Nike, after their smashing success with the Nike+ hardware-and-software platform for running has developed ‘Nike+ Fuel’ and the Nike+ Fuelband. Nike’s product design department (I assume that this is a continuing collaboration with R/GA on their service design, and Apple for iPod integration) has designed the three-part system. First, there is NikeFuel, which is a points system that claims to work across a ton of different exercise activities, allowing individuals to compare their workouts even if they’re different. Second, there is the band itself, which measures exercise activity and is worn like a bracelet. Third, there is the Nike+ dashboard which allows a user to track and analyze his behavior, reviewing daily and weekly statistics, receiving badges and achievements, and also tracking social features.

This review covers my experiences thus far.

Pros:

•  I’m still wearing it everyday!
• The band is great. It’s unobtrusive, but I also get lots of comments on it.
• The Nike+ website was easy to set up (even though I’m a Nike+ Running member, so I already had a lot of the steps done)

Cons:

•  Accuracy of NikeFuel seems really suspect… I can’t tell, but I have some big doubts.
• The Nike+ website is all sizzle with little steak. Insights seem few and far between.
• Too many b.s. ‘badges’ and ‘records’ in the website, not enough encouragement

Unboxing and set-up

The Nike+ Fuelband arrived and I was giddy to get in there and get started. It came in a sophisticated and well-designed, but somehow inconsistently swanky. The outer box is silver, but it’s a bit chintzy, even though from afar it looks pretty nice. Under the flap is a special message, which did add a bit of exclusivity (it’s got an inspirational message from Nike which solicits photos and emails. And a shot of Kevin Durant, looking like a badass in his Nike+ Fuelband. I admit — I got excited!).

Setup of the Nike+ Fuelband was very good. There is a special first-time sync that takes care of setting the clock for you, picking the band’s orientation (switching between right or left arm), and entering height and weight. I couldn’t, and still can’t, tell if I should be updating my weight on any frequent basis, as this has a big impact on calculations of Basal Metabolic Rate, BMR (see formulas to calculate it at wikipedia). If I don’t update my weight, how accurate can the band be at measuring how many calories I burn in a given day?

 The band 

The band itself has an elegant simplicity, well-design but also unobtrusive. Any kind of ubiquitous technology needs to (nearly) disappear into the fabric of everyday life. In addition, ubiquity demands design for ‘peripheral’ use; users need to be able to shift the device into the background of attention, and smoothly move it to the foreground for focused use. Thus far, the Nike+ Fuelband meets these design goals. I hardly think about it unless I want to.

I am a watch wearer, and so, for the first few days, I attempted to wear a watch in addition to the band, like one might do with a Livestrong bracelet. But it’s a little bit too big and bulky for wearing on the same wrist. That felt like too much ‘stuff’, plus it got snagged on dress shirts because of its rubbery and tacky finish. So now I just wear the band, which is also a watch, if not a Swiss-made ‘automatic’ watch made of thousands of tiny beautiful pieces.

The band is solid in the hand has a matte rubber finish, that’s a little bit tacky. The band comes in 3 sizes (S,M,L) and each band comes with two extender links, like a watch band might. The extenders are two different sizes, so there should be a good bit of flexibility in terms of fit. I found a comfortable fit, which is loose, but doesn’t wiggle all around. There is a single button, which feels great to the touch. It’s an Apple-worthy button: just the tactile joy of pressing the button is still very real and satisfying, even after 40+ days. The band has held up very well under my use, and I am not delicate with my tech gear. The only dislike I have for the band is that it’s not totally symmetrical; the edge with the LED meter  is a little bit more sharp than the edge without the LEDs. I feel like a ‘design jerk’ saying so, but this irks me more than it should.

The display is like living in the future. The aesthetic is very retro-futuristic, a series of rainbow-colored LEDs which form a meter along the edge, and a small (17 x 6?) pixel display of white LEDs. The single button activates switching between modes. There are only four modes: fuel, calories, steps, and time. And the driver software lets you configure which of the four you’d like to cycle through (I dropped ‘steps’ since I don’t care about it much… I may drop ‘calories’ too, but that’s actually nice for demoing to other people, which is something I do a lot, maybe five times per week).

On the bottom of the band is the clasp, which has a tiny Nike swoosh embossed into the metal. The clasp doubles as a (normal) USB connector for your computer, which inserts and locks reasonably securely into the other side of the band. Because the clasp is metal, it does bang against your computer wrist wrests, which are of course also made of metal if you have an Apple computer. Nike should have thought about this since I estimate (based on nothing but anecdata and wishful thinking) that the overlap on owning an apple computer if you have a Nike+ FuelBand must approach 90%.

 NikeFuel as a Concept

NikeFuel is an invented metric. And Nike uses jargon instead of a clear explanation of what NikeFuel measures and how. The intent of NikeFuel is to do two interesting and potentially admirable things: First, to generate a single measure of effort across sports, so that a free-weight session could be compared to a run which could both be compared to a game of tennis. Second, the metric is intended to work across individuals. From their marketing materials, “NikeFuel is a normalized score that awards all participants equal scoring for the same activity regardless of their physical makeup.”

However, the sensor that is in the band are only a simple 3-axis accelerometer. I guess that with the user-entered height and weight data there is some way that they can make a claim that are using ‘oxygen kinetics’ to measure activity. They said at the launch that “the intensity of the activity can be measured by quantifying the change in oxygen uptake between rest and being active,” and there was some exercise-sciencey-stuff done on 30 people during development.

In my first months of use, I’ve seen a wide variance in the amount of NikeFuel earned across identical workouts (i.e., running the same route at the same pace, as measured by my Nike+ GPS app, which I still use in addition to the Nike+ Fuelband). It’s obvious, and my experience bears out, that NikeFuel is a lot easier to earn in arm-involved moving exercises such as running than it is in static exercises like free weight workouts or yoga. I don’t bicycle, but I assume this would also be under-counted (I also swim in the summer months, but Nike doesn’t recommend that you wear the band fully submerged). Here’s a cheeky version of the same, as measured by bloggers at Gizmodo.

I have also had instances where I ‘earned’ NikeFuel in specious ways. Or at least I think that’s the case. The worst was a plane trip, where the vibrations of the plane ride caused me to rack up the NikeFuel while I was comfortably (or uncomfortably as I recall … middle seat) sitting down, drinking an occasional club soda, and working on my computer. Another specious instance occurred on one night, when I cooked a dinner at home. Since I spent time chopping, stirring, opening the fridge, and generally making a mess of my kitchen, the Fuelband registered this as the most active part of my day. But I certainly don’t think that this is true.

The idea of a brand inventing their own metrics isn’t new. Way way back in the first dot com boom Swatch created a global ‘internet time’ called “.beats” (Please note the dot. Ugh.) as a part of a brand campaign. They even made terribly ugly watches that told time in both ‘old fashioned’ hours and minutes and with a mode for .beats. Yes, really. And to be honest, I really wanted one. It went along with my college obsession with SI units and my reading up on historical proposals to create a ‘metric’ clock and calendar to go along with the rest of the metric system.

Here’s an article from Fast.Co Design on how big Nike is thinking:

This expanding universe of apps and hardware are an attempt to overhaul how we actually think about fitness and exercise, says Stefan Olander, Nike’s VP of digital sport.

The new Nike+ sensor for cross-training and basketball can measure pressure through a super-thin mylar-based pad that mimics the shape of your sole and is tucked inside the shoe. The pad has sensors on four pressure points–under your toe, heel, and the first and fifth metatarsal head–that connect to a central “sport sensor,” Olander tells Co.Design. This central nerve features an accelerometer, processing power, and a radio to collect and combine data. “Then, through custom-made algorithms, it knows what your foot is doing inside the shoe and broadcasts it real time on your phone through Bluetooth LE (Low Energy),” Olander explains. “This is the intersection of the physical and digital world.”

Nike has the same problem with NikeFuel as Swatch did with .beats: if it doesn’t become widely used, it will move from innovation to mere fad. But, in order to become popular, it would have to get itself into the popular culture to such an extent that it would become like ‘Kleenex’, becoming a generic term for exercise. Or be licensed by Nike to gym equipment manufacturers, workout DVDs, and the like. And neither of those seem likely. Even as Nike invests in extending their portfolio to basketball and cross training via upcoming shoes that work in tandem with NikeFuel and the Nike+ Fuelband, I’m fearful that the idea is too big for one brand to own.

The site

Nike (and RG/A) have updated the Nike+ website to include NikeFuel in addition to its original focus on running data (that comes via the Nike+ shoe fob or the GPS app). The new site is independent from that running data, and the user selects which data to view via a modal panel for the time being (it seems theyre working on integration now). The Nike+ Fuel dashboard includes a track of daily progress as its focal point. The site tracks ‘streaks’, how many consecutive days a user accomplishes his goal, and keeps a running tally of fuel points earned to date, as well as a set of badge-like achievements that track accomplishments.

A nice feature of the dashboard allows user to compare themselves to the wider community and those in their demographic. As you can see, I’m a bit ahead of the general daily average NikeFuel earned by Men 30-39.

2000 NikeFuel is supposed to be average, while 3000 is intended to be an ‘active’ day. I have had my goal set as 3100 since the first week, since 3000 seemed a bit too easy to achieve, but I only get up to 3500 and beyond when I really push it, or I walk a ton. Basically, I’m trying to find a balance point where it’s easy to hit my goal if I make some affirmative decision to get my points, but that I’ll fail to meet it (sometimes just barely) if I don’t.

The dashboard also allows the user to dive into each day. But the ‘detail’ screen this is one of my chief criticisms of the website experience, since the detail view is basically identical to the overview for each day. It does have an hour by hour breakdown, but there would be plenty of space for this ‘detail’ on the dashboard view of each day.

The largest and most visually salient element of the dashboard is the nearly useless ‘ring’ which fill in to show how many NikeFuel points were earned, and a red-to-green color scheme shows how close or far the day was from the user’s goal. It would be a lot more readable to fill in each ring according to its percentage, since the changes in shape would be perceptually easy to distinguish, and more measurable than subtle changes in the rainbow coloring. Plus, a polar bar chart would maintain the metaphor that a a full day of activity would map to 360 degrees. And it would allow an easy extension for days that the user goes past his goal, spiraling inward (or better, outward) to show days where the user achieved 150%, 200% and 300% of goal.

The weekly and monthly overviews are nice, since they give a wider view of the data. And at least color is helpful in these views. As you can see, weekends are my best chance to hit my goal, and Saturday’s are considerably more active than Sundays. The one red Sunday wasn’t a sick day — it was the only day I’ve forgotten to wear my band. I forgot to put it on in the AM, went for a run and didn’t put it on until 1 PM.

 Conclusion

I really like the idea of Nike+ and NikeFuel. I have been to working toward better fitness and health, better eating, and generally ‘living better’ and Nike+ has helped. I was never a runner in high school or college. But in my 20s I tried to pick up running, and Nike+ was a motivator that kept me running, kept me improving, and kept running a bit more ‘top of mind’ than it otherwise would have been. The NikeFuel metric is certainly game-like, and I find myself unconsciously pressing the button throughout the day… I’m not even sure why I do it. Intellectually, there’s no need for the five, ten or even twenty check-ins I do during a given day. But they’re just a little tiny moment of reflection; a way to see how I’m doing.

Plus, one can’t discount the ability of an LED rainbow to improve one’s mood. The LEDs animate, ticking toward the green goal. I do wish for a more constant indicator (the band’s display is dark unless activated, probably to save battery), but then again, that change might, counter-intuitively, make it less likely for me to check in on my progress, instead of more likely.

The newest research in sports medicine and health has shown that walking and other forms of moderate activity bring a lot of health benefits. Moderate activity throughout the day is just as important, or even more important, when compared to a life spent sitting in a chair for many hours of each day, punctuated with even a lot of ‘real’ exercise (Here’s a paper about the topic, referenced in that above NYT blog post, Katzmarzyk, P. T. et al. 2009. Sitting time and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer – Basically, they’re correlated).

And that’s the behavior change I’ve noticed: there have been three times so far (in the past 40+ days) where I’ve gone out of my way to walk more. Just a tiny bit more. I’ve consciously and explicitly changed a common behavior, my ‘usual’ way of runnings errands or getting lunch, by walking instead of driving. Atlanta is a car-centric city, so it’s not like I’ll stop driving to work, but these three instances were times when I could (in one case just barely) walk instead of driving and I did it, just to get the NikeFuel points. So in that sense, the application is a success.

So, despite the poor usability and poor data visualizations of the dashboard, and its lack of deep insights into my activity, or a program to change my behavior, I’m going to keep wearing it. I’ll let you know if and when I fall off the wagon.

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It’s a pretty subtle economics joke. Hint: Check out the card.

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One of the best things about the show Mad Men is how accurate the show is to it’s source cultural moment of the ‘golden age of advertising’ in New York. Unlike other period shows like The Playboy Club and Pan Am, Mad Men’s costuming, sets, styling, and even speech attempt to accurately reflect some deep aspects of culture of New York in the 1960s. Here’s an analysis of real 1960s speech (the ratio of modern usage to period usage) as used on the Season 5 premiere. Ben Schmidt is a historian of language and has two blogs (Sapping Attention and Prochronism) which are insightful if you’re into this kind of thing.

You’ll probably want to click to zoom in.

People in the 1960s didn’t say ‘status meeting’ or ‘dinner reservations’ and also note the outlier status of ‘need to’, ‘want to’, and ‘used to’. Or at least they didn’t write it as much. Note that the comparison is shifted somewhat because the corpus Ben’s using from the 1960s is google books and the language on Mad Men is almost exclusively spoken. Even with that caveat, it’s still a really interesting analysis.

Here’s the article from the Atlantic, with further interesting tidbits on this topic.

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Sisyphus! Tantulus! Zeno’s Paradox! Play them all… 

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This is really nice to-do list app for the iPhone. You can see that there is barely any UI at all — it’s completely gestural. Or nearly so. The app is still in development and ’coming soon’ so the video you see here is faked. But I like it.

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Where are we watching video content? TV is still the juggernaut.

And here’s a different source, but platform matters when it comes to watching video too. People love a big screen, but they also love the iPad screen.

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Check this out: Rappers. Wrapping. (See more at rapperswrapping.tumblr.com) Next year, I want to recruit Atlanta’s hip hop royalty and get them to help us collect and distribute toys for kids. But for this year, we just had to photoshop ‘em!

Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night!

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There’s rhetorical uses of information visualization, and then there’s this. Just look at the scale on the left and then look at how well and poorly the values line up on the line chart. Especially over there at the end (9.1, 9.0, 8.6). Can’t. Make. The. Line. Go. Down.

What a gem.

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I’m a sucker for this kind of project: I love art and design that uses (and abuses) currency. And I love rhetorical uses of information visualization and infographics. “Occupy George” is a plan to print out (on your own dollar bills) statistics which are at least reflective of the goals of the Occupy Wall Street protestors. Hat tip to Infosthetics.com.

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One really nice little piece of UI I saw this morning: Google Chrome’s print dialog. It displays, directly on top of the print button, a simple calculation of how many pages are to be printed. The team knew that pages mean two different things, so Chrome calculates both how many pages are being printed, but also (and more importantly from a sustainability standpoint), how many sheets of paper are going to come out.

Thanks Google, for at least giving people some subtle motivation to print double-sided (though I’ll note that, in terms of nudges to better behavior, checking this box by default would be even better). There is also the matter of 2-up prints, which print two pages, rotated and shrunken, on the same side of a page. Which saves paper if not one’s eyesight. However, I’ll note that this dialog is not available in Chrome… a user would have to go to their OS print dialog to find these options and therefore lose the ability to see the calculated page and sheets of paper data.

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Google’s got a new visualization of activity on Google+ and it’s called Ripples. The intent is to visualize how (public) posts are passed inside of google’s network. Really nice to look at and very fast rendering. The only examples I’ve played with so far are confirmatory analysis: the people I already know are ‘big’ and influential, are in fact, big on the Google too.

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Many of the rumors about the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 included a claim that Apple was planning to increase the size of the screen, from its current 3.5 inches to 4 inches. And, while it wasn’t clear if there would be both a larger-screen and the standard size, or whether the newest iteration would come only in that larger size.

The design of the iPhone is certainly a hot topic, and of course, all of design is navigating the trade-offs, but the quick analysis and comparison that Dustin Curtis did is quite nice. The green shading indicates the area covered by the thumb of the hand holding the device (I’m not sure, but I bet it’s estimated with Dustin’s hand, and not the 95% percentile used in ergonomics; still quite telling though).

But what’s even nicer is this claim by John Gruber at Daring Fireball:

But I do think there’s a ‘Pepsi Challenge’ type effect going on here. The thing with the Pepsi Challenge was that most people preferred (and prefer today) the taste of Coke over Pepsi, when drinking a full serving. But, when you only take a sip or two of each, people tend to prefer whichever is sweeter, and that was Pepsi. Some people really do prefer Pepsi, of course. But I think there are a bunch of people buying big-ass Android phones after taking just a sip or two in the store.

This seems very right to me. And then just over the weekend, I read an academic paper which includes a framework to explain long-term product use and appreciation [PDF]. It also coincidentally includes a study about smartphone features and what design elements are salient under different time-spans. During the lifespan of a product, the user’s feelings, attitudes and conceptions change, but so do the very metrics that they use to measure and qualify their experiences. Below is a visual representation of the model that the authors use in the paper (and in a system they’ve built to collect these kinds of data), but I highly recommend reading the whole thing if you’re interested in long-term issues in designing the “right” thing, be it physical or virtual.

[PDF] at Dr. Karapanos’ site. Citation: Karapanos, E., Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., & Martens, J. (2010). Measuring the Dynamics of Remembered Experience Over Time. Interacting with Computers. Volume 22, Issue 5, September 2010, Pages 328-335.

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