#RITNOS

#RITNOSRaving in the Name of Science Michelle Shevin - @michebox

LUMINARY LABS WWW.LUMINARY -LABS.COM @LUMINARYLABS

My name is Michelle Shevin, I am a senior analyst at Luminary Labs, a strategy & innovation consultancy, and I am here to tell you about how Ive been raving in the name of science.1

The OriginThe HypothesisThe DreamThe DevicesThe ExperimentThe ResultsThe TakeawaysThe Conclusion#RITNOS

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Total calories: 3,485

Rave calories:3,000The Origin

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It all began in 2012. I had followed up a normal work day at my standing desk and an 8 mile bicycle commute with a five hour electronic dance party, also known as a rave. I synced my pedometer and heart rate monitor to find Id burned 3,500 calories over the course of the day 3,000 of those at the rave. I was actually able to break down how much Id burned per DJ setfrom 600 calories during Benny Benassis warm-up set up to 1000 calories during Calvin Harris. Unbeknownst to myself and the incredible lineup of DJs, we were doing somethinghealthy. The rave blew my 8 mile bike ride out of the water. Scanning back a few days, I found the rave dwarfed a three mile run. Even my ballet classes didnt come close, at around 700 calories per 1.5 hour class. From that day forward, for health reasons, I made raving a priority in my life. At Luminary Labs, we talk a lot about sensors and health tech, and upon hearing of my hobby, my colleagues wanted to know more.

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The Hypothesis

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For the uninitiated, raves can appear strange. But where else do you see hundreds of young people getting together for an incredible cardio workout? Have you ever heard of a workout that can burn a pound of fat in a single session, set you in a trance, and make you feel connected to hundreds of your peers? Historically, raves have been associated with underground warehouses, teenage indiscretion, and grown people sucking on pacifiers. But raves are really about a DJs ability to command the crowd to dance. With the mainstream explosion of electronic dance music, raving is an exercise revolution disguised as a really good time.

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Luminary Labs asked the question: What happenswhenananalysttestsfive wearable devices for threemonths while raving?#RITNOS

My colleagues were skeptical. So Luminarys CEO asked the question: what would happen if an analyst tested five wearable devices for three monthswhile raving? I was up to the challenge-- but could any combination of sensors provide satisfyingly rich analytics to prove my case? And so began a quest for the quantified rave.5

The Dreama budget for raving?!

meAfrojack@djafrojack#RITNOS

Suddenly I was living the dream: a mandate to rave, which sent me in search of new venues and previously unconsidered rave logistics. Highlights included a 7:30am pre-work dance party and an early-evening private set with world-famous DJ Afrojack at the Sirius XM studios.

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The Devices

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Going in to the experiment, I already had the devices at the bottom of the screen an iphone running Argus, and the Shine, a fashion-forward tracker from Misfit Wearables. I was frustrated by the analytics, as neither provided visualizations as good as the now-defunct pedometer and heart rate monitor combination that had produced the graph you saw a few slides back. But in my research, no one device in the market stood out as having particular promise.Using my budget, I purchased the BodyMedia FIT, the fitbit flex, and the latest and greatest heart rate monitor from Polar.7

The Experiment

And so I set out to stress test these five tracking devices and applications under sweaty, strenuous, and loud conditions. Would the bass interfere with the sensors? wondered one colleague. Would my heart rate fluctuate around romantic prospects? Asked our chief strategy officer. Would wearables make me rave harder, or serve as a distraction, questioned my boss and I began to wonder, would I experience wearable-overload?

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Fitbit Flex

The DevicesBodyMedia FITArgus by Azumio Misfit ShinePolar H7 HRM

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When it comes to self-tracking via wearables, it matters where you wear it.

1. ArgusGPS and accelerometer on phone + optical sensor to provide an optional snapshot of your heart rate.Will automatically kick on the GPS to provide a visualization of your run or bike ridestep counts are consistently low, probably because I tuck my phone into my shirt while dancing and it remains close to my core. Conversely, if my phone is in my hand, it will overcount steps.

2. Misfit Shine (tracks motion and sleep using the same three-axis accelerometer as most other wearables) algorithms trained to differentiate between walking, cycling, and swimming. it is one of few wearables designed with fashion in mind and it is also waterproof. On the down side, its tiny form factor makes it easy to lose. Ive found that Shines step count is sometimes high, except for when its lowsince I wear it on my collarbone, a high reading probably means lots of jumping.

3. Fitbit Flex (offers quite a bit of flexibility, but also comes with some friction) There are three ways to sync the device, which is either convenient or confusing. I like that the Flex vibrates when I hit my daily steps goal, but it it gets wet every time I wash my hands, and it counts steps even if I am just gesticulating. Its counting steps right now. Battery life is also an issue: it needs to be charged more than once a week, which isnt frequent enough to make it a habit, but is frequent enough to make it annoying.

4. BodyMedia FIT (combines four sensors to offer a more accurate picture of activity)The three-axis accelerometer, heat flux, skin temperature, and galvanic skin response sensors track motion, calorie burn, and something called METs, which has something to do with how efficiently you burn calories. The combination of sensors makes the calorie burn estimation closer to the results you get from a heart rate monitor, but the tracker itself is bulky, a little uncomfortable, and prone to falling down your arm. And the noise it makes to alert you its lost or made contact with your skin will leave the distinct impression on your co-workers that youre raising a Tamagotchi.

5. Polar H7 heart rate monitor provided a reliable baseline of my activity level. Sure, its a little unwieldy for all day, every day wear, but for tracking the impact of particular activities it cant be beat.

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The Results

4 raves 3epic danceparties

and a lot of inconsistent data#RITNOS

After three months, I anticipated having a fuller, more accurate view of my health, but I couldnt even get a complete picture of just the raving. Even after massaging the data to compare efficacy across devices, I ended up with large gaps.

Over the course of four proper raves and three epic dance parties, I was intrigued but not surprised surprised to find that while step counts were pretty consistent, Calories varied significantly across devices and activities, demonstrating differences in the complex algorithmic secret sauces that translate the somewhat arbitrary metric of steps into the somewhat arbitrary metric of calories.

Afrojack ended up being my best workout, burning more than 600 calories per hour no surprise to me, as I was very stoked to see one of my favorite DJs from one foot away. I raved so hard that the Shine registered 1.5 hours of intense cycling coincidentally, the same analysis it gave to an accidental trip through the washing machine. (CLICK)

Most confounding for the devices was the night before New Years Eve, when I followed up a somewhat unsatisfying rave at pier 94 by running home down the West Side Highway. (PAUSE). My heart rate monitor, the most authoritative source of calorie counts, tracked me burning over 1200 calories, but the Fitbit only registered about 850, perhaps thrown off by the juxtaposition of raving versus running.

After all was said and done, I ended up coming to the following conclusions.10

The TakeawaysNot all movement is equal.We can track everything, and yet understand nothing.Metabolism is more complex than we or our algorithms can yet account for.The technology is there. The personalization and informatics are not. (Yet.)Health is not an engineering problem. #RITNOS

Ive learned a lot about both raving and wearable computing, and here are the five main takeaways I want to describe:Not all movement is equal, and our analytics dont account for this. A step is not the same as a jog or a jump, let alone a fist pump. We can track everything, and yet understand nothing. Tracking does not necessarily lead to true understanding of health and wellness.Metabolism is more complex than we or our algorithms can yet account for.The technology is there. The personalization and informatics are not. (Yet.)Health is not an engineering problem. But engineering can advance our understanding of health. 11

1. Not all movement is equal a step is not a jog is not a jump

Raving

Running

FitbitArgusPolar HRM#RITNOS

RavingRunning

Here are some analytics from that rave and run combo. Fitbit shows me the whole day, and can differentiate the intensity of raving versus running in terms of calories burned. Argus automatically picked up the run, which is probably its best feature, but as the readout of my heart rate during the activity shows, I was working out at the same level for two hours before the run. In fact, by 2:30 in the morning, Id burned 1238 calories, far beyond a 1.5 mile run. But Argus didnt pick it up the raving for analysis because it didnt register as running. And the difference in the motion I generated also threw off the fitbit, which underestimated the calories burned by about a third. On every device, all this nuance a step versus a jump versus a joggets lost after the algorithm spits back a simplified metric of steps. Raving is more about jumping, shaking your hips, waving your arms, and fist pumping than it is about taking steps.In the end, what do steps really mean? Its great to have a target to shoot for, but it would be better if the analytics would distinguish between different kinds of movement.

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2. We can track everything and yet understand nothing

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Raving

Running

RunningRaving

Though a consistent pattern of movement is discernible across devices, at the end of the day all Im left with is an interesting picture of my odd sleeping habits. Problematically, the devices are designed with certain assumptions about how we live, and these arent true for everyone. For one thing, midnight is an arbitrary barrier. Only the fitbit and the heart rate monitor allowed me to easily view analytics for events in the middle of the night, which happens to be when I workout. Over the test period, I almost always hit my daily movement targets and often far exceeded them, but I didnt lose weight. Tracking my activity in five different places made me data-obsessed, rave-crazy, and slightly neurotic, but it didnt make me eat less. Health and wellness are more complex than the picture painted by my tracking devices.13

3. Metabolism is complexmore than we or our algorithms can yet account for

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All of these devices track movement, and offer a calculation of calories burned. But what about the calories we consume? Our bodies make a distinction between a calorie from soda and a calorie from lentils, and yet even if I went to the trouble of painstakingly logging every meal in the BodyMedia FIT or another interface, each calorie would count the same. Do we even have the necessary understanding of nutrition to properly equip the algorithms? As this diagram of metabolic pathways shows, these processes are complex. We have accelerometers for movement, pulse detection for heart rate, and heat sensors for sweat, but what is actually going on inside our bodies and how can we track it?14

4. The technology is there.the personalization and informatics are not. (yet.)

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The holy grail of health tracking is passive tracking of both calories consumed and burnedsomething that may be possible with portable spectroscopy. At least two companies claim to have miniaturized spectroscopy a technique that can identify distinct materials at the molecular level, quantifying nutrients, calories, allergens, and more.

Tellspec is promising a handheld food scanner, while Airo Health has debuted a wristband concept that could potentially provide an accurate picture of both calories consumed and burned by tracking metabolites in the blood. Airo stopped accepting pre-orders after their introduction to the market was met with a healthy dose of skepticism, but the technology is there. It just needs the right informatics.

The FDA has already approved an ingestible sensor by Proteus Digital Health that will track medication adherence how long until a dental implant can track nutrition as we consume it?

There is work to be done on batteries. There is work to be done on informatics, visualization, and algorithmic sensitivity. There is work to be done by behavioral psychologists: Somehow well have to account for the fact that seeing Ive walked fourteen miles in a day usually just makes me want pizza. But the revolution is underway.

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Photo courtesy of @jetscott5. Health is not an engineering problem. but engineering can advance our understanding of health.

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For better or for worse, we are witnessing the infancy of the algorithmic optimization of our lives. But health is not an engineering problem. 10,000 years ago, when we were literally chasing down our food, we didnt need wearables to track our health. But as demonstrated by the trajectory of chronic disease, somehow it seems weve engineered away our intuition on when to move, what to eat and when to stop eating. Health tracking can arm usand our doctorswith better information, and thus help us make better choices.Though its still early days for wearables, this cyborg revolution will be made conspicuous by wearable computing, until computing dissolves into our textiles, and eventually into our bodies themselves.

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The Conclusion#RITNOS

Technology shouldnt distract us from our experiences, it should support our enjoyment of the moment by quietly and passively keeping an eye on the bigger picture for us. And in my experience at raves, tracking did just that. Ultimately, raving provided an excellent basis of comparison across devices and gave shape to the barriers, limitations, and promise in the wearables market. The future of self-tracking may hold the key to combatting chronic disease and shifting the cultural conversation around health and wellness, but until then, I encourage you to join me, raving in the name of science.

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Thank You!scan the code for a playlist on Spotify#RITNOS

If youre curious what all the fuss is about, scan the QR code for a Spotify playlist that serves as a good intro to EDM18

Strobe - Club EditDeadmau5Strobe2009Progressive House379222.66XXX - Progressive House - XXX - ID3v1 CommentProgressive House - - Purchased at Beatport.com