- USA - WEST
- San Francisco
- Silicon Valley
- San Diego
- Seattle
- Los Angeles
- Marin
- Portland
- Hawaii
- Berkeley
- Santa Barbara
- USA - EAST
- New York
- Boston
- Washington DC
- Chicago
- Pittsburgh
- Philadelphia
- Louisville
- Houston
- South Florida
- Raleigh
- Vermont
- Austin
- Nashville
- Minneapolis
- Denton, TX
- AFRICA
- Cape Town
- AUSTRALIA
- Sydney
- CANADA
- Toronto
- Vancouver
- Montreal
- Victoria
- Ottawa
- EUROPE
- Amsterdam
- London
- Paris
- Brussels
- Edinburgh
- Spain
- Dublin
- Munich
- Berlin
- Mannheim
- Helsinki
- Czech Republic
- Hamburg
- Aachen/Maastricht
- SOUTH AMERICA
- Rio de Janeiro
- ASIA
- Tokyo
- Beirut
- Singapore
- CITY NOT LISTED?
- Start Your Own
QS Group! Topics
- Discussions (75)
- Group Experiments (5)
- Lab Notes (7)
- Meeting Recaps (48)
- News and Pointers (126)
- Numbers from Around the Web (4)
- Personal Informatics (1)
- Personal Projects (83)
- QS 101 (3)
- Tool Roundups (41)
- Toolmaker Talks (9)
- Uncategorized (3)
- Videos (137)
- What We're Reading (12)
Author Archives: Ernesto Ramirez
Personal Informatics In Practice: Digital Histories for Future Health
Every day you interact with the web. You log on. You upload, you download. You tap and you click. You search, you “like”, you pin, and you retweeet. These actions make the web work for you, but they also make you work for the web. It should come as no surprise to even the casual technology observer that we are now living in the age of data. Some call it “big data”, but instead of thinking about it as a thing, we can also think of it as a an ecosystem that can be described by its fundamental structure – the database. Our lives and the actions we engage in on a daily basis are constantly being accessed and stored in a database. Our actions may be passively collected (think about how Google’s Adsense operates) or actively collected (checking in on Foursquare or updating Twitter). While it may seem as if we are living and engaging with a dystopian ecosystem, we believe that there are possibilities for engaging and enhancing our current health experiences by taking advantage of our personal and social databases.
We don’t need to rehash the idea that we are also in the midst of an explosion of tools and services that support the gathering of health-related data. If you’re reading this, you know that the Quantified Self movement is gaining traction and new devices and applications are being introduced at a rapid rate. Naturally, these tools are heard towards helping an individual lead a healthier life. This inherently creates a future-focus environment in which the user is presented data, analytics and recommendations for positive health behavior change in the future. This is typically accomplished through two methods, information on current behavior and goal progress information. We argue that many of these tools and services are not taking full advantage of the vast amount of information that is available to them.
The wide-spread proliferation of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers and users to access large amount of data opens up numerous possibilities for possibly improving the health and behavior conversation between a user and his or her tools/system of choice. We foresee unique opportunities to use historical behavioral data, contextual information (e.g. location, social interactions), and health actions to highlight patterns and provide feedback through three mechanisms: 1) reminders of success, 2) behavioral prompting, and 3) contextual reminders.
The road to good health is not an easy one and there are numerous examples of individuals who unfortunately lapse into negative or poor behavior patterns. We are proposing that when “failure” points are identified there is an fantastic opportunity to remind the user of previous success. Reminding a user that they have had success in the past may help to limit self-doubt and reductions of self-efficacy. The psychological burden associated with failing to meet goals could be quickly replaced with a positive a reminder of the user’s mental and physical capability that is based on objective historical information. Instead of just having an empty “You can do it!” we envision future services that say, “We believe you can do it because, look, you’ve done it before!”
We also see the potential for building upon the concept of modeling illustrated in social learning theory and social cognitive theory. While modeling is typically thought of in the social sense, we propose that services can use historical data and contextual information to create powerful and meaningful representations of a user (maybe as a digital avatar). By presenting a user with their past self they can use it as a tool for comparison (“What am I typically like?”) or competition (“How can I be better than my previous self”). Imagine, for example, waking up in the morning and seeing your past self and associated behavioral data in your bathroom mirror or on a display on your refrigerator. We believe that this past self could act a positive guide to help you lead a healthier life.
Lastly, the large amount of information stored in your behavioral databases has an inherent ability to converge and provide information about contextual factors associated with behavior. For example, we can easily find out if you get more or less steps on days it is raining or if you tend to eat worse when you check in to airports around dinner time. Using simple data mining and contextual linking it is possible to identify positive behaviors patterns and bring them to light. By tapping into the rich digital histories being captured and stored across many services we may not only help a user remember, but also enhance their ability to celebrate and re-enjoy healthy behaviors.
Too often, we encounter warnings of services tracking out behavior and using if for their own personal gain. It is time that we ask the tools and applications we use to help us lead healthier lives by taking full advantage of the vast amount of historical information we are collecting. The Spanish philosopher, George Santayana told us, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Our increasing digital lives allow use to not only remember the past, but harness that powerful information to help us lead better, healthier lives.
This article is a summary of a position paper by Ernesto Ramirez and Eric Hekler that will be discussed at the Personal Informatics in Practice workshop at CHI 2012 in Austin, TX on May 6, 2012. The workshop will be a gathering of researchers, designers, and practitioners exploring how to better support personal informatics in people’s everyday lives.
Quantified Self and the Future of Health
On February 7th, 2012 there was an amazing “meeting of the minds” at CALIT2 down in San Diego, CA. The local San Diego Quantified Self meetup group working in collaboration with CALIT2, the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems, and the West Wireless Health Institute brought together Gary Wolf (Quantified Self founder), Larry Smarr (CALIT2 founding director), Dr. Eric Topol (Scrips Translational Research Institute director and world-renowned digital health evangelist), and Dr. Joseph Smith (Chief Medical Officer of the West Wireless Health Institute) for a great panel discussion. As you’ll see and hear below, it was a lively discussion surrounding the topics of Quantified Self, personal health, the future of the medical profession, and patient-provider communication. There was also a great round of questions from the audience (and twitter) and I highly suggest you stick around to hear the very last question!
Special thanks to CALIT2 for filming and editing the event video. You can find more videos from CALIT2 on the their Youtube channel here.
QS 101: Make it Social
You’ve all heard the buzzwords being thrown around these days, “social media”, “social networking” etc. With the explosion of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other social services it seems like you can’t go anywhere online these days without being bombarded with buttons yelling at us to “Share this!”, “Like This” or “Send this to a friend”. Why the proliferation of social sites and services? All of this shouldn’t be a surprise, after all we humans are social creatures. Rarely do we exist in complete isolation. Cliches like “No man(woman) is an island” are so popular because, well, they’re just true. So how does this relate to your Quantified Self practice?
You are a product of your social environment. We’ve known in the behavior sciences for a long time that the actions of one person can impact the actions of another. One of the most common concepts we’ve used to explain this is social support. To put it simply the social support represents the idea that we our behaviors are influenced and supported by our social structure (friends, family, colleagues, etc.). There are four fundamental types of social support that have been identified as being beneficial for starting and/or maintaining a behavior (follow the previous link for more detailed descriptions):
Emotional support – empathy, understanding, and caring from others.
Tangible support – material assistance (money, goods, tools, etc).
Informational support – guidance, both subjective and objective knowledge.
Companionship support – inclusion in a social group.
One of the great things about Quantified Self is that we attempt to provide these four types of support at our meetups around the world and at our annual conferences. I’ve personally been able to find all four over the course of the last year and a half and consider myself immensely lucky to have found caring and smart people willing to support my self tracking journey. But, maybe you don’t have a meetup in your area or you’re not comfortable asking for support from a fellow group member, then what now? Well, one of the ways to enlist social support is to just ask someone who you trust and feel comfortable with to help you. This can be a major step for most people, but in most cases it is a step worth taking.
Briefly, the take away here is that when you are starting or looking to continue in your self tracking practice it is worthwhile to consider eliciting social support from others. Although we call ourselves the Quantified Self the notion of “self” does not mean our practices must be done in solitude. In fact, we celebrate and encourage informational support through our Guide and the Quantified Self Forums. We work hard to create collaborative learning and knowledge exchange and we’re always working on fostering the other aspects of social support, but I encourage you to look outside your local QS community to others in your social circles that may be able to provide you the support you need.
For a more specific example of the power of social support I highly encourage you to take the time to read the Transformative Power of Sharing Mood post by the wonderful Alexandra Carmichael.
Quantified Self and the Future of Health
We here at Quantified Self Labs wanted everyone to know that tonight (Feb 7th, 2012) Gary Wolf will be speaking in San Diego on a panel with Dr. Eric Topol, Larry Smarr and Dr. Joseph Smith about “Quantified Self and the Future of Personal Health.”
The panelist for the event include:
Gary Wolf is the co-founder of The Quantified Self, a global collaboration among users and makers of self-tracking tools. His is also a contributing editor at Wired magazine, where he writes regularly about the culture of science and technology. His work has appeared The Best American Science Writing (2009) and in The Best AmericanScience and Nature Writing (2009). In 2010, he was awarded the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism prize. In 2005-2006 he was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University.
Larry Smarr is the founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a UC San Diego/UC Irvine parnertship, and hold the Harry E. Gruber professorship in Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD’s Jacobs School. Dr. Smarr has recently been profiled by Xconomy about his ‘10-Year Quest for Quantified Health‘
Dr. Joseph Smith is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Science Officer of the West Wireless Health Institute, Dr. Joseph M. Smith leads initiatives to identify and accelerate the use of health care innovations and technologies to advance the Institute’s mission of lowering health care costs.
Dr. Smith has an extensive career at the intersection of clinical medicine and engineering. Prior to joining the Institute, he was most recently Vice President of Emerging Technologies for Johnson & Johnson in their Corporate Office of Science and Technology. He also served as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Guidant / Boston Scientific, Cardiac Rhythm Management.
Dr. Eric Topol is an innovator and pioneer in the fields of wireless medicine and genomics. In addition to his serving as Vice Chairman of the West Wireless Health Institute, he is the Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, a National Institute of Health funded program of the Clinical and Translational Science Award Consortium. He is also Professor of Genomics at The Scripps Research Institute; Chief Academic Officer and holder of the Gary and Mary West Chair of Innovative Medicine at Scripps Health; and, a Senior Consultant cardiologist practitioner at Scripps Clinic. Dr. Topol has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, named as one of the 12 “Rock Stars of Science” in GQ, Top 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare in 2011, and is recognized by the Thomson-Reuters Institute of Scientific Information to be in the Top 10 cited biomedical researchers in medicine in the past decade. He is also the author of the recently released book, Creative Destruction of Medicine.
Although this event has been sold out for those in the San Diego area, CALIT2 is able to stream a live webcast of the event. If you would like to tune in please set your calendar reminders for 7PM PST and follow the instructions below. Once you’ve downloaded the appropriate software be sure to tune into the live stream at: http://calit2.net/webcast.
Calit2 On-Demand Streaming in Windows Media
Calit2 webcasts require Microsoft’s Windows Media Player or compatible software and a broadband Internet connection. Our typical webcast stream runs at 512kbps at 640×480 pixels.
All Windows PC users should have a built-in version of the player, or click here to download the latest version. (Our webcasts require Version 9 or higher)
[Troubleshooting Windows Media Streaming]
Mac users can download a free software program called Flip4Macthat will allow their Quicktime player to play back Windows Media formats.
Troubleshooting playback on a Mac?http://www.flip4mac.com/support_wmv.htm
In Linux-based environments, free open-source multimedia players such as MPlayer and Xine can be used with the correct codecs installed.
We will also be taking questions via twitter during the event. Please use the #FHSD hashtag if you would like to ask the panelists a question during the Q & A period.
Numbers from Around the Web: Round 3
Will Lam loves coffee. As the chief blogger over at Indie Coffee Blog he’s constantly trying new roasts, new places and letting his readers know about good coffee spots around his hometown of Toronto. In 2011 he decided to go a step further and really track his coffee habits. Let’s look at a few of his awesome insights:
Number of Cups of Coffee Consumed (total and by type):
Frequency of Coffee Consumption:
Total Spending by Location on Coffee:
I highly recommend reading his fascinating blog post about what he learned by tracking his coffee habits over an entire year. You can find that here. Will also used his new found love of data collection to steer him to his local QS Meetup. Way to go Will and thanks for letting us learn from your data!
We got such great feedback on the orignal NFATW post that we decided to turn it into a regular feature. Every few weeks be on the lookout for new posts profiling interesting individuals and their data. If you have an interesting story or link to share leave a comment or contact the author here.
Quantified Self 101: Make it SMART
So here we are again with another QS101 post. I thought today I would walk you through a concept* that you may find useful for getting started on the path to self tracking. As a behavioral scientist I get a lot of people asking me about goals – how to set them and how to achieve them. I always fall back on a course I taught as a graduate student aptly titled, “Psychological Skills for Optimal Performance.” During that course I taught undergraduates different concepts related to sports and exercise psychology, and one of those was the SMART system. I think this system, beside being a clever use of an acronym, could be useful to your self-tracking practice.** So what does SMART stand for?
S is for Specific. When you decide to track something it is best to choose something that is specific rather than general. For example, you might be interested in your cardiovascular health and you decide you want to start tracking exercise. Well, exercise is a very broad category and can include activities like gardening to training for ultra-marathons. In this example you would be better served to track a specific type or method of exercise. For instance, you could use apps like RunKeeper to track your running or cycling, or you could use a pedometer to track your steps. The great thing about making a goal specific is that it allows you to find the right tool for the job. While you would be hard pressed to find one tool that tracks exercise, you can easily find a method for tracking your strength training activities or your swim laps.
M is for Measurable. You would think this would be a no-brainer, but it happens to the best of us – we forget that what we want to track has to be, well, trackable! Quantified Self is all about using the power of data to help you learn about yourself. When you decide to start along the path of self tracking it is vital to make sure that what you have decided to track can be measured in some way. In future posts we’ll talk about objective and subjective data collection, but for the sake of brevity let’s assume that you decide to use a tool or method that assigns numerical values to your behavior. Great! But, that is only the first part of making it measurable. You also have to take a step back and take a look at the data output(s) and decide if they make sense to you. For example, Gary likes simple 3-point scales to rate his feelings – good, bad, and okay make sense to him. Make sure that your measurement make sense TO YOU, because in the end YOU are what matters in this adventure.
A is for Attainable. Making your self-tracking attainable is a concept that is related to our previous QS 101 post on Keeping it Simple. So let’s assume you have the specific behavior down and you’ve decided how to measure it in a away so that it makes sense to you. It is now time to take a look at what it would mean to you and your daily routine to implement the tools/methods and data collection necessary to engage in your self-tracking plan. Simply put, is this something you incorporate into your life given all of other personal and social commitments. I, for instance, would love to track all of my writing for 2012 (email, twitter, research papers, etc.), but at this point the effort to engage in that task would take enough time that it would take away from more productive and enjoyable endeavors.** Making sure that your self-tracking practice is actually attainable is a good way to ensure that it remains enjoyable as well as informative.
R is for Relevant. The main focus of a self-tracking practice is to generate self-knowledge (look at our header it’s right under our logo). Knowledge generation for the sake of knowledge generation, while interesting, pales in comparison to knowledge generation that benefits you. You want to make sure that when you decide to engage in self-tracking that the insights you are looking for are helping you become your better self. For instance, I could track the number of times I open and shut my refrigerator and freezer doors. While this might give me some insight into what kind and type of food I consume (fresh vs. frozen) that data is probably less relevant to learning how to be my better self than tracking the types of food I consume by using a food diary or food image capture.
T is for Time-bound. This is probably one of the most overlooked and misunderstood aspects of self-tracking. By making your practice time-bound you are not necessarily stating when you start and stop your tracking-practice for a particular behavior of interest. Rather, you can use the idea of time-bounding to set parameters for when it is appropriate to delve into the data and go through the process of analysis and reflection. Setting this time parameter is very specific to you as a individual and the behavior you’re tracking. You may, for example, only need a week’s worth of food diary data to start to make some conclusions about how your diet is affecting your mood. On the other hand you may need to track your anxiety levels for a month to really understand how they correlate with your boss’s travel patterns. The actual time you decide to start the process of analysis and reflection isn’t important because you can always continue tracking after your first, second, . . . nth pass. What is important, is that you decide a priori (before the fact) when you will do it and then stick to that plan.
So there you go. Now that you know all about SMART you can starting using it to “optimize” your self-tracking practice. To get you started with conceptualizing your current or new self-tracking practice within the SMART framework I’ve created a simple worksheet you can use. It is available here for download here or you can access the google doc here. As always, feel free to post questions in the comments!
*This is only one concept for helping you think about self-tracking. We’ll be highlighting other methods and processes in the near future!
**I prefer calling my self-tracking a practice because it is an ever evolving process of doing, learning and refining.
***If you know of a way that I can accomplish this tracking task, capturing everything I write, in a simple and non-time consuming manner please let me know. You can email me here.
Numbers from Around the Web: Round 2
When we talk about Quantified Self and the meaning behind tracking there is always an underlying current that the numbers rule all. That there is a fundamental truth that is available and discoverable. But, in some cases self-tracking can take on different forms. For this week’s NFATW post I wanted to two projects that forsake the emphasis on numerical tracking for something different – visual tracking.
Hugo Campos
Hugo is a shining example of the e-patient movement (which I learned recently stands for empowered patient not electronic). His experience as the proud owner of an implanted cardiac defibrillator has led him to become an advocate for patient-centered data ownership and improved access to data derived from therapeutic medical devices. He’s also a big fan of Quantified Self and on more than one occasion has inspired me to be more active by engaging in fun FitBit step challenges. For the month of December, Hugo decided he was going to try and eat a vegan diet for the entire month, and document everything he ate by photographing his food. What followed was an amazing visual record of his dietary patterns. Take a look! You can click the images for the full Flickr set.


I figure if it’s not worth photographing and sharing, it’s not worth eating. – Hugo Campos
Jeff Harris
Jeff Harris a photographer and 13 years ago he decided to begin an epic quest to document his life by taking on self portait every day. What follows is an amazing story of why he began this journey and the insights into his life that he’s learned along the way. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I will say that is well worth the six minutes to watch the video below.
We got such great feedback on the orignal NFATW post that we decided to turn it into a regular feature. Every few weeks be on the lookout for new posts profiling interesting individuals and their data. If you have an interesting story or link to share leave a comment or contact the author here.
Quantified Self Around the World
So there I was the other day sitting in a coffee shop and perusing the various Quantified Self Meet Up groups around the world. I was blown away by the how many people are taking time out of their busy lives to host and attend meetups in their cities. As we’ve mentioned before, Quantified Self has been growing by leaps and bounds, and it is due to our enthusiastic community of experimenters, tool makers and learners. We now have 45 groups around the world sharing their experiences and knowledge! Take a look at the map below to get a glimpse of our worldwide community.
View Quantified Self Meetups in a larger map
If you’ve never been to Meet Up take a look at the map to find one in your area (links to Meet Up groups are included). Is there no group in your city? Well go right ahead and start one! We’ve compiled a great FAQ to get you started and on your way.
Did we miss your group? Add it to the map (it’s public and editable) or just post a comment and we’ll add it to our list.
Quantified Self 101: Keep It Simple
Here at QS Labs we’re here to help everyone, from the experienced researcher to the person who hasn’t done an experiment since they built that model volcano in sixth grade. We also try to listen to our community and we’ve heard many requests from individuals just starting their journey of self-experimentation. Well, I’m happy to announce a brand new bi-monthly section called Quantified Self 101. We’re going to be covering things like how to decide what to track, experiment design, bias, how to interpret your data, and other fun stuff. We also want to here from you. If there is something your struggling with or want to learn more about please leave a comment below or get in touch with us via twitter (@quantifiedself)
For our first post, we’re going to highlight some lessons from our friend Seth Roberts and his great talk on self-experimentation at Show & Tell #5:
Lesson #1: Something is better than nothing. Engaging yourself in some experiment, no matter how flawed it may be, is better than never starting. The best way to learn is to do. So go out and do something!
Lesson #2: When you decide to start something try and do the simplest thing that you think might give you some insight. It’s great to have ambitious ideas, but keeping it simple ensures your experiment is manageable.
Lesson #3: Mistakes are worthwhile. Some of our best knowledge comes from learning from our failures so don’t be afraid of failing. By keeping it simple you also keep the mistakes small and manageable.
Lesson #4: Seek help from others. We have a great network of individuals around the world who are ready and willing to help you on your tracking journey. Find a meetup in your area and don’t be afraid to solicit help!





















