In 2013 Eric Boyd started using a Nike FuelBand to track his activity. Not satisfied with the built in reporting the mobile and web applications were delivering he decided to dive into the data by accessing the Nike developer API. By being able to access the minute-level daily data Eric was able to make sense…
Cors Brinkman is a media artist and student. In June of 2013, he started a project to keep track of himself. He decided to start with LifeSlice, a tool to have your computer keep track of your behavior by taking a picture, screenshot, and location data every hour. After experimenting with that system Cors added…
Philip Thomas is a software engineer at OpenDNS. He’s been collecting a lot of personal data since college, first starting with his custom built beer tracking system. He then moved on to slightly more sophisticated personal data. As the data started to pile up in services and systems he started to explore what it would…
Natalie Melchiorre wanted to work on her upper body strength so she decided to start a 100-pushup challenge. Using a popular iOS app she followed a plan and tracked her progress as she increased her strength. Along the way she encountered some hurdles, but continued on. In this talk, presented at the Phoenix Quantified Self…
Amaan Penang was faced with a life change when he moved from Texas to California to start a new job. While preparing for the move he started to examine his financial health and was surprised by what he didn’t understand about his spending and income. Using the popular financial tracking software, Mint, he started to…
We’re always interested in the way individuals with chronic conditions use self-tracking to better understand themselves. A great example of this is our good friend, Sara Riggare. Sara has Parkinson’s Disease and we’ve featured some of her amazing self-tracking work here before. At the 2014 Quantified Self Conference, Sara gave a short talk on what…
Vanessa Sabino was curious about how well she was sleeping. By using the Sleep as Android app, she was able to track a year of sleep data. Before she was able to dig into the data she ran into a problem with the data export format and had to write her own custom data parser…
Paul LaFontaine was interested in understanding his anxiety and negative emotional states. What was causing them? When were they happening? What could he do to combat them? Using TapLog, a simple Android-based tracking app (with easy data export), Paul tracked these mental events for six months as well as the triggers associated with each one….
Jenny Tillotson is a researcher and fashion designer who is currently exploring how scent plays a role in emotion and psychological states. As someone living with bipolar disorder, she’s been acutely aware of what affects her own emotions states and has been exploring different methods to track them. In this talk, presented at the 2014…
Natty Hoffman was interested in learning more about how she spent her money. Not satisfied with just categorizing expenses, she dove deeper into two years of transaction data to understand where here money was going and how well her spending habits reflected her ideals. In this talk, presented at the Boston QS Meetup group, Natty…
Stefan Hoevenaar’s father had Type 1 Diabetes. As a chemist, he was already quite meticulous about using data and those habits informed how he tracked and made sense of his blood sugar and insulin data. In this talk, presented at the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, Stefan describes how his father kept notes and hand-drawn…
Memory, cognition, and learning are of high interest here at QS Labs. Ever since Gary Wolf published his seminal piece on SuperMemo, and it’s founder Piotr Wozniak, in 2008, we’ve been delighted to see how people are using space repetition software. Our friend and colleague, Steven Jonas, has been using SuperMemo since he read Gary’s…
As much as we talk about self-tracking being about health or fitness. . . I think it’s about identity. I think it’s about us. It’s about seeing something meaningful in who we are. Laurie Frick is a self-tracker and visual artist. It this unique combination that has led her down a path of learning about herself…
We’ve heard from our friend, and Pittsburgh QS meetup co-organizer, Anne Wright, many times before. She’s a wonderful proponent of the power of self-tracking and using data, research, and continuous exploration to discover and learn about what is meaningful in your life. All of that passion stems from a personal experience with overcoming various health…
At our 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, as with all our events, we sourced all of our content from the attendees. During the lead up were delighted to have some amazing interactions with attendees Alberto Frigo and Danielle Roberts, both of whom have been engaged with long-term tracking projects. This theme of “Tracking Over Time”…
As a long-time meditator, Peter Lewis had a suspicion that meditation could improve brain function, so he conducted a self-experiment and enlisted a few other individuals to help test his hypothesis. By using an arithmetic testing application, a timed meditation app, and an ABA research design he was find out that there was some support…
Sky Christopherson first spoke at a QS meetup about his self-tracking discovery on sports performance made while training for a cycling competition in which he set a new world record. His experience led him to help other athletes use personal data to obtain their best performances. In this talk, Sky and his wife Tamara recount his works as a training advisor to the 2012 women’s olympic track cycling team that led to a surprise silver medal.
Debbie Chaves is a science and research librarian at Wilfred Laurier University and was interested in understanding her job and the various demands placed on her time. Using methods she’d employed previously she set about tracking different aspects of her work. The data she gathered allowed her to advocate for new changes and policies within…
Justin Timmer is a student in human movement science and a fitness instructor. He was interested in exploring what he could do to increase his strength. Rather then starting with a typical strength training program Justin wanted to test if isometric muscle contraction alone could increase his strength. This type of exercise involves just squeezing…
At the start of 2013 Ellis Bartholomeus decided to start keep track of her life. Since her friends were always asking about her eating habits (she was a consistent traveler and rarely at home) she decide to start tracking her food. Instead of entering in her food into a calorie counting app she started taking…
