Tech Legos and Apple Healthkit

There is an amazing amount of technology going on around us. The cool part about a lot of the new gadgets is how they are an assemblage of the old getting connected with the new. In my mind, the most fun aspect is the mobility of the experience. Couple of years ago, the word used was gamification. However, taken on its own, gamification was still driven by the old vehicle of the computer. However, it is being mixed with the capabilities of the mobile, and additional tech is now showing up. Camera is a great example. There are very few lifestyle apps that don’t realize the traction taking pictures can bring to the app usage (selfie generation). Sure, some apps look like they should not need your pictures or your geolocation (my pet peeve is a game asking for location), but many are doing an excellent job at that.

I remember visiting CES couple of years ago and finding an array of devices not talking with each other. Partly political, partly because of new tech standards, there was a chasm between the products. The heart rate monitors were not on bluetooth to upload the user information directly. The step counters were not mounted on the wrists yet. The nutrition data was separate from the information your body was giving and that was separate from the exercises. And that felt like it will be solved with Apple health.

I am using Apple Health now, with my data from various apps flowing there. So far, I am still so much tied with my apps, that I have not been apple to (pun) use this well. This is probably because of 2 things: I don’t connect apple and my health in my mind yet. Sure apple watch looks great and it will have a 50% margin, but right now, Apple is not a part of my health graph like MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal and Fitbit are.

The second reason is seems that a little of this has to do with the way Apple UI is designed. The silos between various apps are very real. A cohesive, collaborative platform should be able to:

1. Seamlessly connect my apps AND their data: The whole stress is around “tracking”, and I want to extend the realm of what is tracking. Punching numbers around nutrition, or steps is a miniscule part of it. Apple health so far does the job that Microsoft Excel does for data: create graphs. Unfortunately, it is not very useful on a small screen, and a little exhausting after some time.
2. Surface the right data to the top: I had a conversation with friends who used the windows phone before moving to apple. They miss the fact that you can “pin” information to the main screen, be it the emails of interest to you, or the app data (favorite Pandora station). Pursuit of health (running, walking, dieting, exercising) is an activity that requires mindfulness, and a non-laboured interaction with your vitals. Since there is no model in Apple to do that unless you click the right icon, the information gets lost in the noise of 30 other apps on the phone.
3. Journaling: I might be getting rabbit holed on a wish here, but a calendar integrated with a journal is a great idea for Healthkit. Apps such as coach.me fill that gap, to some extent.

More ruminations coming up!