Lose weight faster with DietBet and your friends
Posted: May 24, 2013 Filed under: API, Community, Fitness, Motivation, Nutrition, Partners, Weight | Tags: betting, changelog, competition, dietbet, dieting, fitness, healthgraph, money, partners, profile, root, validated, verified, weight, weightloss Leave a comment » DietBet (@dietbet) enables runners and other RunKeeper (@runkeeper) users to lose weight socially by challenging their friends to a fun weight loss competition. Below we discuss how DietBet uses the Health Graph API & platform (@healthgraphapi) to help motivate people and keep their weight loss journeys fun.
Bill Day: Please tell us about yourself and your work.
Adam McClean: I’ve been a product manager for almost eight years with a primary focus in e-commerce and consumer brands. I’m also training for a mini marathon later this year.
BD: What is the “elevator pitch” for why someone should use DietBet?
AM: DietBet is the best way to jumpstart your weight loss and access the support necessary for success. It’s a great mix of behavioral economics (loss aversion and financial incentives), community, and accountability. Players put money on the line and commit to losing 4% of their starting weight in 4 weeks. During the game players make friends, talk smack, and track their progress as they approach their goal. Everyone who reaches the 4% goal ends up splitting the pot — and making some extra money!
BD: How did you get started using the Health Graph API?
AM: I’ve been using RunKeeper and saving my personal data to the Health Graph for a long time. After I participated in my first DietBet, it was clear the two should integrate.
BD: How will the Health Graph platform benefit your business?
AM: Running and weight loss have a symbiotic relationship: Losing weight helps you improve your running time and running helps you burn calories and lose weight. Players who connect with RunKeeper will be able to send weight updates and running activities directly into their DietBet game. Also, any weight updates made on DietBet will be saved back to the player’s Health Graph account.
BD: Which portions of the Health Graph API do you use, and why?
AM: Since DietBet players are required to submit their weight in order to play the game, we wanted to allow them to do this from both DietBet and RunKeeper. We are using Weight Measurements to get/post all of the weight data. We are also grabbing running details from Fitness Activities, so other players can see the hard work being done to help a player make their 4% goal.
BD: What do you like about the Health Graph API?
AM: We love the simple approach to tracking changes using Root Resource and Change Log. This lowers the overhead on our end and lets us post activities and weight updates within minutes.
BD: If you could request any new feature from the Health Graph platform, what would it be? How would you use it?
AM: Most weight data is inputted manually using the honor code. Because we have a team of referees and a photo-based verification solution, we’d like to be able to indicate when weight entries are “verified” vs “manual” the same way you can specify a “tracked” vs “manual” fitness entry.
BD: Can you share any future plans for DietBet? What’s coming next that people will be excited about?
AM: We’re hoping to expand beyond the current game (4% in 4 weeks) and allow users to play games with longer timelines and larger weight loss goals. We also want to reward players for maintaining their weight or establishing healthy habits.
BD: Is there anything else we should know about you or DietBet?
AM: Organize a game today and use promo code HEALTHGRAPH. If you get 8+ other players into the game, we’ll refund your bet!
Bill Day (@billday) is Platform Evangelist & PM for RunKeeper where he helps developers learn about and use the Health Graph platform.
Validating tracked versus manual fitness activities using the Health Graph API
Posted: April 8, 2013 Filed under: API, Data, Fitness, Partners, Running | Tags: activities, api, brands, corporate_wellness, feed, fields, fitness, gps, healthgraph, manual, map, path, revisions, rewards, runkeeper, running, source, tracking, type, validation 1 Comment »One question we receive fairly often from Health Graph (@healthgraphapi) partners is how to validate that fitness activities (runs, walks, bike rides, etc.) read out of the Health Graph platform were GPS-tracked versus manually entered by the user. Rewards partners a la Earndit and GymPact, corporate wellness providers like Virgin HealthMiles, and forward-thinking brands are often keen to differentiate between tracked versus manually entered activities as part of their programs’ anti-fraud efforts.
So how do you tell the difference between GPS and manual activities?
Each item in the Fitness Activity feed has ‘source‘, ‘entry_mode‘, and ‘has_path‘ fields. These let you determine whether the activity was originally submitted as a GPS-tracked activity. For example, a RunKeeper (@runkeeper) mobile app GPS-tracked run should have values of “RunKeeper“, “API“, and “true” for the aforementioned fields, respectively.
If you are interested in including GPS-tracked sources from other Health Graph partners’ activity trackers, you can include them in your ‘source‘ filtering. In addition, if you need to differentiate by type of activity (i.e. running, walking, cycling, etc.) you can use the ‘type‘ field.
Using these fields should let you skip any activities for which the user simply entered statistics, or originally entered the route map (path) via the Web. For more details on these fields and their usage, please refer to the Health Graph fitness activities documentation, especially the array structures section.
Caveat: The only reliable way to verify whether a user has subsequently edited the map associated with a saved GPS-tracked activity is to manually check each point’s ‘type‘ (a value of “manual” means it has been edited). For efficiency’s sake, we don’t save that information anywhere else in the Health Graph platform and we retrieve points only when full data for the activity is requested. That said, we have found that most users do not edit maps after the fact.
Bill Day (@billday) is Platform Evangelist & PM for RunKeeper where he helps developers learn about and use the Health Graph.
Improve your health with GEAR4 Renew SleepClock
Posted: April 4, 2013 Filed under: API, iOS, iPhone, Partners, Sleep | Tags: bands, clock, gear4, health, healthgraph, ios, ipad, iphone, noncontact, partners, platform, renew, sensors, sleep, tracking, wellness Leave a comment »The GEAR4 Renew SleepClock is a non-contact (no headbands or wristbands) sleep monitor for RunKeeper (@runkeeper) users. Read on to learn how GEAR4 uses the Health Graph API & platform (@healthgraphapi) to add sleep into your health and wellness profile.
Bill Day: Please tell us about yourself and your work.
Shane Dodson: I joined GEAR4 five years ago and have been developing consumer electronics accessories during my time here, mostly docking stations and Bluetooth products. We started to make our products app-enabled around 3 years ago. This also meant we could look beyond the audio products which made up our core range.
I enjoy long distance running and so getting the chance to work with products that measure my health and fitness has been really exciting. I am currently training for my first ultra marathon. Looking at my sleep and running stats helps me to analyse the progress of my training program and also keeps me motivated by sharing the data with some of my training partners. I am trying to observe patterns – for example when I have had periods of very heavy training, do I sleep longer or deeper?
BD: What is the “elevator pitch” for why someone should use Renew SleepClock?
SD: The Renew SleepClock is a wireless sleep monitor that allows you to track, learn, and improve a third of your life you know little about!
Renew uses a sophisticated bio-sensor to wirelessly monitor your sleep. It knows when you’re awake and it knows when you’re asleep. It even knows whether you’re in light or deep sleep. It senses your breathing and movement and wakes you up at the best moment in your sleep cycle so you start the day feeling refreshed and energized. The Renew App lets you track your sleeping patterns from graphs and charts and gives you analysis and recommendations based on your data to help you get the most out of your sleeping life.
BD: How did you get started using the Health Graph API?
SD: When we launched the Renew SleepClock we knew that we had to engage the user, not just to measure their sleep, but to improve their habits so that they could sleep better leading to a healthier life. We knew that we had to look beyond sleep itself and started to look at potential key partnerships. RunKeeper was the obvious choice and that led us to Health Graph platform.
BD: How is using the Health Graph platform benefiting your business?
SD: SleepClock Renew can measure all sorts of details about sleep patterns, influencing factors, and suggestions on how to improve sleep. However we realised that sleep is only one of three important parts of a healthy lifestyle; sleep, diet and exercise. Health Graph platform allows the user to have this more holistic view of their wellness which is essential.
BD: Which portions of the Health Graph API do you use, and why?
SD: We push Sleep Sets to the Health Graph giving you a more complete health picture. The Renew SleepClock measures these details.
BD: What do you like about the Health Graph? What would you like to see changed?
SD: It has very good documentation. We had a request to allow group uploads of sleep data (previously it was only possible to upload a single night’s date). The API has now been changed to enable this.
We post summary statistics. It would be useful to push the underlying raw data. This would allow more interesting graphs about sleep within RunKeeper.
BD: If you could request any new feature from the Health Graph, what would it be? How would you use it?
SD: We sync sleep data with our own cloud-based storage. It would be interesting to look at ways that our cloud could sync directly through the Health Graph platform. This would enable our users and RunKeeper users to have a seamless experience and have even more insight into their sleep patterns.
BD: Can you share any future plans for Renew and Gear4? What’s coming next that customers will be excited about?
SD: We are looking at a second version of the Renew SleepClock which would make this more accessible to a wider user base. We would definitely intend to continue using Health Graph platform for that.
We are also looking at other related products – more on that later this year.
BD: Is there anything else we should know about you, Renew, or Gear4?
SD: At GEAR4, we believe that personal wellness should be accessible to everyone. To that end we created the Renew brand. Leveraging our experience in smartphone accessories we are creating a line of products that help people track, learn and improve their personal well being. The Renew SleepClock is just the beginning. In the coming months and years we are looking to stand out with products that incorporate the latest technology while being affordable and simple.
Bill Day (@billday) is Platform Evangelist & PM for RunKeeper where he helps developers learn about and use the Health Graph.
Bringing hackathon innovation into RunKeeper product
Posted: March 29, 2013 Filed under: Android, Apps, Hackathons, Personal, Running | Tags: activities, android, charts, distance, english, french, german, goals, hackathon, innovation, insights, ios, iphone, italian, japanese, languages, pace, personal, portuguese, product, PRs, records, runkeeper, spanish Leave a comment »We’re very excited to have our new RunKeeper (@runkeeper) release out on Android now and iPhone soon!
Not only is RunKeeper now available in seven languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese), but we’re also shipping our first internal hackathon-derived feature, personal fitness Insights for Elite users.
Here are some screenshots of Insights and other parts of the app in the various languages:
Power tip: When you try out Insights, be sure and click on the different parts of the pie chart to change “focus” in the pace and distance charts. You can also change the time period and/or activity type under consideration via the settings icon at the top right.
I am particularly proud of how fast our team took Insights from hack to product-quality feature. This team never ceases to amaze me!
Enjoy and please let us know what you think!
Bill Day (@billday) is Platform Evangelist & PM for RunKeeper where he helps developers learn about and use the Health Graph.
Please help improve Health Graph partner connections
Posted: March 13, 2013 Filed under: API, Partners | Tags: connection, form, healthgraph, oauth, partners, platform, survey, users Leave a comment »We would appreciate your feedback on how we can make Health Graph platform (@HealthGraphAPI) partner and user connections better.
This form should just take a few minutes of your time. Thanks in advance for your response!
Bill Day (@billday) is Platform Evangelist & PM for RunKeeper where he helps developers learn about and use the Health Graph.
RunKeeper hackathon recap
Posted: March 6, 2013 Filed under: Android, Apps, Community, Data, Fitness, Hackathons, Running, Strength | Tags: android, apps, audio, community, develop, fitness, gps, hackathons, hacking, platform, products, projects, reports, runkeeper, strength, tracking, training, visualization, widget 2 Comments »What happens when you give the RunKeeper crew two days to let imaginations run wild? A whole lot of awesome, I tell ya!
Our product team is always five steps ahead in terms of planning awesome updates to the app, but in the process, it seems each developer has some sort of other dream RunKeeper project they’d love work on if given the time. We decided to set two work days aside for engineers (and others throughout the company) to try to bring those to reality.
The community had lots of interesting ideas on what would make it into our first-ever hackathon, and many of the resulting hacks lined up with your hopes! There was a simple start widget for the home and lock screens on Android, much-improved data visualizations for your fitness reports, refreshed technology for GPS tracking, in-app strength training tracking, a pretty new website, and some ridiculously fun and motivating audio cues. And a few other things that are internal and top secret—for now 
.
We’re cranking hard to turn some of these hacks into actual RunKeeper updates and features, so stay tuned! And in the meantime, the pictures and videos below are definitely worth (more than a) thousand words.
Kicking off some collaboration
Jacked Jim gears up for his commercial debut in the RoidKeeper strength training promotional video
This team gave a whole new meaning to the term long hours. (And garnished some awesome prizes in the process)
Makers of the aforementioned awesome audio cues hack demo their goods
A little hack to get some more real-time insights into our community
Working to build the perfect GPS algorithm
And this video really speaks to the need for that widget hack
One of our many rocking trophies
Cross-posted from the RunKeeper blog.
RunKeeper hackathon is on!
Posted: February 25, 2013 Filed under: Community, Data, Events, Hackathons | Tags: apis, apps, data, develop, hackathons, hacking, healthgraph, mc, platform, runkeeper Leave a comment »I’m very excited to have helped organize and be MCing this week’s first ever RunKeeper (@RunKeeper) internal hackathon!
Watch for posts to our @HealthGraphAPI Twitter account throughout the hackathon and for a wrap-up of all the goings-on here after we see what amazing things our teams build. And as always, please remember to:
Bill Day (@billday) is Platform Evangelist & PM for RunKeeper where he helps developers learn about and use the Health Graph.
