Fitbit - Thoughts a Month In

For those that know me, they know that I like to collect data about myself, my house and things around me (weather, etc.), but particularly about myself.  I have a Garmin GPS watch with a heart rate monitor and am disappointed that I could never get the foot pod to work and give me more information about my pace & stride.  When I saw the opportunity to get information not only about my daily activities, but my nightly activities, I jumped on it.

The Fitbit One is a small accelerometer/pedometer that has been enhanced in a number of very useful ways: it collects data all the time and is capable of transferring it via BlueTooth to your computer or to your iPhone and then synch with the Fitbit website.  It tracks your steps, your stairs climbed (rounded to the nearest flight) and your sleep.  Its as easy as hooking it onto your pants (or bra) and wearing it.  Very easy to use.

Fitbit has taken this One Step Beyond (maybe two) by doing the following things:

• Integrating a wi-fi scale/body fat measurement device called the Aria that synchronizes with the same data.  Pretty sweet.
• Allowing the user to track calories in via food intake.

Overall, I very much like the product and plan on using it for the long haul.  I've been happy to see it making in-roads amongst other nerds and believe Fitbit could have a good future in front of it.  I had a business lunch recently and three of the nerdier ones (myself proudly included in that group) were wearing their Fitbits and all were enthusiasts.  Keep that last comment in mind as you read the below comments, but I would definitely recommend you doing your homework and learning about the product before taking the plunge (but you'll probably want to take the plunge).

Here are my initial thoughts on the positives:

• Easy to get started: It took me only a few minutes to be up and running with my Fitbit.
• No continuing fees: The website is supported by your purchase of the device.  It costs nothing to keep using it.  Though I haven't looked into it, Fitbit appears to be looking for ways to add premium features (like coaching) to the website that would require an on-going payment.  I like the model, as long as it is successful and they don't start requiring me to pay for access (if I don't find the premium features worth the cost).
• Easy to keep it on:  I've been wearing it for over a month and have very rarely forgotten to make sure it's on.  Slight downside that one does have to keep track of one more thing.  My standard check before I leave the house (for phone, wallet, keys, watch) now includes Fitbit.  Not difficult addition to make to the routine.  The wrist band for use during sleep is comfortable and easy to use, as well.
• Well laid out website:  Fitbit's website is mostly easily navigated and you can get to where you want to be quickly.  Body measurements are buried a little bit far, but it does make some sense that they are 
• Long battery life: I charge maybe once per week and there still seems to be a fair amount of juice in the Fitbit.
• Excellent application integration:  Fitbit has some real potential for an eco-system to develop around it.  There are a number of applications available - my favorite part is that Lose It! calorie data can by synch'ed.  Lose It! is my favorite app for easily entering meals and then entering them again in the future.  I'm a creature of habit.  My breakfasts and lunches rarely change too much.
• Can "invite" lots of people to the scale: You get seven invitations for people that can be users of the scale and set up a free Fitbit account to track their body fat and weight.
• Can track other both measurements:  Specifically measurements that matter to me: blood pressure, pulse, and various size measurements (chest, hips, thighs, biceps, forearms, etc.).

Here are my initial thoughts on the negatives:

• Sleep monitoring is very flakey:  The bottom line here is that I don't much trust the sleep monitoring results.  I sleep pretty soundly most of the time and the most useful aspect of the sleep tracking for me will be just the total amount of time asleep.  My wife does not sleep soundly.  She had a night this week where she couldn't sleep for hours - until well after 2am and the Fitbit claimed she slept the whole time.  Gave her a 90% sleep efficiency score.  Not at all realistic.  Also problematic, there is no way to provide Fitbit feedback on this to help them improve.  Perhaps this is just a really hard problem?  [Note that there is a "sensitive" option for sleep tracking, that I just found when poking around the website.  I will use this and see if my results seem more reasonable.]
• Built-in food/calorie tracking is lacking:  I have found it not nearly as convenient/easy to log food and meals on Fitibit as compared to Lose It!  Not a fatal flaw given the comment about the app environment above.
• Would prefer more customizability of the dashboard: From what I can tell, I have no ability to change what I see as a default.  For instance, I don't care so much what my weight is right now, I care more about my body fat percentage.  Perhaps I'm deluding myself that it could happen at my age, but I do lift regularly and would have no problem if my weight stayed constant or went up if my body fat was decreasing at the same time.  It would mean that I was just that much more "buff".
• More flexibility in presenting data, generally:  Allow the users to build graphs that matter to them.  The interface should allow both x-y scatter plots as well as temporal graphs.
• Lack of transparency in body fat calculations:  Fitbit only provides a number (would it be hard to provide a "Learn More" link that they goes into the nuance -- only those that are interested will follow it and you won't confuse those who don't care?).   What they don't provide you with is any sort of perspective on what information they are or are not using.  From what I can tell, they have to be using gender, but beyond that, its not clear if they are using age or height or other body measurements.  They also don't provide you with any guidance as to your confidence interval around the measurement (i.e., what is the 5th percentile to 95 percentile range that your body fat could be given that the statistical relationships are not super strong).  See here for some initial introduction to Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA).  All that said, BIA is supposed to be useful in tracking an individual's body fat over a period of time.  Just try to be as consistent as possible in when and how you take your measurements.  I wake up, pee and then weigh.  Hopefully, I'm not over of under-hydrated and I should get a good day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month view of my body fat.  
• Give me direct access to my data: Not through some data vault that Microsoft has developed, but via XML and CSV.  Perhaps this will come over time?  Seems pretty important for me to have long-term confidence in Fitbit.
• Can't wear it in the shower:  Not really serious.

Obviously there are aspects of the Fitbit that I can't comment on (yet):

• Durability: I've only had it for a month.  Haven't dropped it from any height or seen it withstand something impressive.
• Battery life over the long term:  Off to a good start as noted above, but its long-term usability will depend heavily on long battery life.  I don't need something else to charge in everyday.

Areas where I would like Fitbit to improve (not explicitly or implicitly noted above):

• Recognizing what you are doing automatically:  I went skiing with my Fitbit.  It seems to me that Fitbit ought to start asking you if you are skiing if it has tell-tale signs.  These signs should easily crunched out of Fitbit's own data given that presumably thousands of users are logging their activities and Fitbit has their accelerometer data for these periods of time.
• Improve on the silly badges: I don't have great suggestions here, but it would seem like they could come up with some more meaningful badges than what they have.  Perhaps a little fun and silliness is all that they should be, but if so, let me turn them off.  Perhaps what they should really do is allow users to create badges that can be shared by the others in the community.  I'd be interested to see what other people find noteworthy about their health.
• Allow for more nuanced goals: I'd like to maintain a certain minimum percentage of my day that is non-sedentary.  This goal is probably best viewed on a rolling average basis (maybe two or three day average), but matters more to me than just a one day value.
• Improve alarm features: I'd like to have the Fitbit One buzz when I've been sedentary for a particular period of time.  I spend a lot of time in front of my computer at work five days a week.  It'd be good to know when I should think about stretching my legs and doing a lap around the office.  Fortunately, this seems like it can be dealt with solely by software (so we may see this improve).  This may be asking a bit much, but would iCal integration be that hard?

What do you think Fitbit needs to do better?  I plan on doing a follow-up post six or so months in to let you know what my thoughts are then.  Maybe Fitbit will have added some of above requests?