Hack yourself: measuring wellbeing

Walraj Singh Gosal - 12.04.2012

Just how many minutes did you spend commuting last year? How did that pint last night affect your sleep? What area of New York City is most likely to trigger an asthma attack? And how did that cup of coffee affect your mental performance this morning? Somewhere, people are asking themselves these very questions.

Granted, these people are likely to be technophiles and hackers, but someday you may be asking them too. This is the theme of our latest event 'Hack yourself: measuring wellbeing' on Thursday 3 May 2012, in our ongoing 'Hot Topics' series.

As Gary Wolf, a co-founder of the movement puts it in this excellent piece in the New York Times, "people do things for unfathomable reasons". Human behaviour remains a mystery. We often lie to ourselves, or we try to guess and just get it wrong. Self-hackers are exploring a very different route - a route guided by numbers.

'Quantified self', 'self-hacking', 'personal informatics' are just some of the terms associated with a grassroots movement where people are measuring, logging and sharing various metrics related to their physical and mental health. The movement is largely inspired by a dictum that 'you can't improve something until you can measure it'. With the rising use of social media and the ubiquitous use of ever-cheaper sensors in devices such as the smartphone, the act of making such measurements is becoming ever more passive. As such, the movement is fast moving into the mainstream.

Often the simple act of measurement alone can act as powerful motivator for self-improvement - the hard facts are just too objective to ignore. The first-order approach may be to ask questions such as how many miles did I walk today, or how did my calorie intake compare with yesterday? But combine this approach in a way which takes into account all the data that one may be able to collect in the future, and things become much more interesting. For instance, combine calorie intake with mental performance, or your location data with emotional well-being, or your sleeping patterns with data from your weekly exercise regime. Indeed, the combinations are only limited by the types of data we are able to collect.

It is not just technology-driven however; social is playing a role too. Firstly, this has led to some very interesting datasets. Take for example Asthmapolis, a small start-up based in Wisconsin, which tracks the geographic location of asthma attacks through a small device that fits onto an inhaler. Every time the inhaler is used, the geographic location is tagged. Harnessing these large datasets will allow researchers to link asthma attacks to environmental conditions such as air quality or distance from a certain type of crop.

Secondly, self-trackers are redefining our interface to traditional healthcare. Healthcare 2.0 as it is often called will likely demand more self-management and self-monitoring from us, and here quantified self can make a big impact. For instance, the ability to share quantitative information is the basis behind companies such as PatientsLikeMe and CureTogether. Some self-trackers are combining their data with traditional laboratory tests that are available from third parties or ordered by their healthcare professionals, and even to their DNA through commercial services like the Google and Genentech-backed 23andMe. Read the compelling story of Larry Smarr, who directs the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, for a glimpse of what this interface between self-tracking and healthcare might look like.

And large technology firms, such as Philips and Nike are taking note. Start-ups such Zeo, Asthmapolis, and Fitbit are developing new hardware, and new apps that exploit the tracking capabilities of the smartphone such as Boozerlyzer, Moodscope, and Vital Signs are emerging.

So how might this story play out? What further innovations will be needed to roll out the technology into the mainstream? What will consumer-based quantified self tools look like? What will they measure? What will quantified self businesses of the future look like? How will we feel about sharing our personal tracking data with these businesses?

To explore these themes, Nesta is hosting a breakfast event, 'Hack yourself: measuring wellbeing' on Thursday 3 May 2012, as part of our popular 'Hot Topics' series. Our panel of speakers to debate these issues are Adriana Lukas (Quantified Self London), Jon Cousins (Moodscope), and Kiel Gilleade (Liverpool John Moores University). Registration information can be found here.