4 ms·

I may be missing it, but the cool thing about self-quantification usually is that you're not responsible for data acquisition. Things like Fitbit/Aria and Mint

by nkozyra 11y ago

I may be missing it, but the cool thing about self-quantification usually is that you're not responsible for data acquisition. Things like Fitbit/Aria and Mint give you some automation and make it easier and more fun to track data (and ostensibly turn it into action). Of course, there's no smart tape that I know of, but I think it would be CV-trivial to rescale & superimpose silhouettes of progressive pictures on top of each other to track progress. I know a lot of people would shy away from doing something like that, but it would be pretty cool. As it is, measurement with a tape is a pain and worse, subject to a good deal of human error.

amelius 11y ago
Isn't it possible to do the measurements visually using Kinect?
- nkozyra 11y ago
  Possibly? I don't know how accurate they'd be, but that's the general idea I'm getting at. Most people have a hard time committing to long-term work for self-quantification. Measurement of progress autonomously means less work, more data and perhaps more chance at success.
- graeham 11y ago
  It should be _possible_ with even a smartphone camera. You'd have to do some clever image registration to calibrate/ re-scale the image.
- CardenB 11y ago
  I did a little (undergraduate) research in this area. Granted, I'm not very skilled in this regard, but my conclusion was that the kinect still wasn't quite accurate enough to make proper measurements like this.
nd1 11y ago
I definitely agree with this - I think minimising the friction of the data acquisition has been a big part of their success. As a personal example I've wanted to track my weight over time for a while but even the friction of standing on the scale and then manually inputting the data was enough to mean I only ever kept it up for a few days at a time before I'd forget or it became tedious. I recently bought a Withings scale and the removal of that seemingly tiny amount of friction of manually recording the weight has made all the difference.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  In high school I tracked my weight and what I ate everyday in a mini composition notebook I kept in my back pocket at all times. I was exercising (not to mention younger) at the time and lost 30lbs over 4-6 months. I now have a withings scale (along with access to a myriad of food tracking apps) and I can't help but feel that my pen and paper approach was easier and yielded better results... I always feel like entering what I eat into an app is more trouble than it's worth especially when it starts listing calories because I feel compelled to get it as close as possible so I'm busy searching for calorie counts of what I'm eating. In HS I just wrote "Ham and cheese sandwich, sandwich bag of chips, fruit cup" and that was it. MUCH simpler IMHO. I know calorie counting "works" but I just always feel like the counts aren't accurate b/c I cook a lot of things myself and have no desire to calculate the calories of the dishes I make. If they aren't going to be accurate then why do it at all?
  - nkozyra 11y ago
    I did what you did at one point in my life. In fact, I got perversely granular. It's not sustainable unless you have a very real mental condition. I think Withings is compatible with a number of apps such that you should't have to enter anything into it to have it tracked. Food is notoriously difficult to track, and even harder to accurately quantify. A burger and fries meal at one place could be +/- 500 kilocalories despite looking the same. After a while I determined food tracking to only be worthwhile at high level - ie, "ate burger" - rather than to do the legwork necessary to get accurate kilocalorie counts.
    - dylanjermiah 11y ago
      >"not sustainable unless you have a very real mental condition" How does a mental condition correlate with sustainability? Food is easy to track, if you cook yourself. And fairly easy to estimate if you're eating out. I've tracked ~96% of my meals for the last 3ish years. As well as my weight every morning. It takes an extra 10 minutes max per day, the benefits of the data is well worth my time.
tomeglenn 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I agree that autonomous data collection would be preferably. But with body measurements it would be difficult to achieve. I understand that people may not be comfortable measuring their body accurately. I will look to provide help and guides in app to solve this. Body measurements are the purpose of this app, so image analysis and estimation based on silhouettes would not achieve the desired outcome.

by nkozyra 11y ago

amelius 11y ago

Isn't it possible to do the measurements visually using Kinect?

nkozyra 11y ago
Possibly? I don't know how accurate they'd be, but that's the general idea I'm getting at. Most people have a hard time committing to long-term work for self-quantification. Measurement of progress autonomously means less work, more data and perhaps more chance at success.
graeham 11y ago
It should be _possible_ with even a smartphone camera. You'd have to do some clever image registration to calibrate/ re-scale the image.
CardenB 11y ago
I did a little (undergraduate) research in this area. Granted, I'm not very skilled in this regard, but my conclusion was that the kinect still wasn't quite accurate enough to make proper measurements like this.

nd1 11y ago

I definitely agree with this - I think minimising the friction of the data acquisition has been a big part of their success. As a personal example I've wanted to track my weight over time for a while but even the friction of standing on the scale and then manually inputting the data was enough to mean I only ever kept it up for a few days at a time before I'd forget or it became tedious. I recently bought a Withings scale and the removal of that seemingly tiny amount of friction of manually recording the weight has made all the difference.

joshstrange 11y ago
In high school I tracked my weight and what I ate everyday in a mini composition notebook I kept in my back pocket at all times. I was exercising (not to mention younger) at the time and lost 30lbs over 4-6 months. I now have a withings scale (along with access to a myriad of food tracking apps) and I can't help but feel that my pen and paper approach was easier and yielded better results... I always feel like entering what I eat into an app is more trouble than it's worth especially when it starts listing calories because I feel compelled to get it as close as possible so I'm busy searching for calorie counts of what I'm eating. In HS I just wrote "Ham and cheese sandwich, sandwich bag of chips, fruit cup" and that was it. MUCH simpler IMHO. I know calorie counting "works" but I just always feel like the counts aren't accurate b/c I cook a lot of things myself and have no desire to calculate the calories of the dishes I make. If they aren't going to be accurate then why do it at all?
- nkozyra 11y ago
  I did what you did at one point in my life. In fact, I got perversely granular. It's not sustainable unless you have a very real mental condition. I think Withings is compatible with a number of apps such that you should't have to enter anything into it to have it tracked. Food is notoriously difficult to track, and even harder to accurately quantify. A burger and fries meal at one place could be +/- 500 kilocalories despite looking the same. After a while I determined food tracking to only be worthwhile at high level - ie, "ate burger" - rather than to do the legwork necessary to get accurate kilocalorie counts.
  - dylanjermiah 11y ago
    >"not sustainable unless you have a very real mental condition" How does a mental condition correlate with sustainability? Food is easy to track, if you cook yourself. And fairly easy to estimate if you're eating out. I've tracked ~96% of my meals for the last 3ish years. As well as my weight every morning. It takes an extra 10 minutes max per day, the benefits of the data is well worth my time.

tomeglenn 11y ago

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that autonomous data collection would be preferably. But with body measurements it would be difficult to achieve. I understand that people may not be comfortable measuring their body accurately. I will look to provide help and guides in app to solve this. Body measurements are the purpose of this app, so image analysis and estimation based on silhouettes would not achieve the desired outcome.