It seems like everything and anything is about gathering data nowadays. Every small, minute, inconsequential detail of one lifes is worthy of being recordee, tracked, quantified.
Why?
What does it matter how much music I’ve listened to in a day, a week, a month and a year? What is the relevance of keeping a record of how many bowel movements I’ve had in a month (exceptions do apply)? Keep record how many books I’ve read, how many hours spent combing my hair, washing my teeth or how many showers taken in a month? Or by extention any other habit we may have?
What does it matter? Is it that important to carefully and methodically keep record of your life instead of just living it?
Or is it a way to justify all of those tracker apps being created at a dime a dozen?
It is actually a very popular opinion outside of tech circles to think a lot of data is not worth collecting. It’s why so many see it as “it doesn’t matter” or “I don’t have anything to hide”.
The reality is all this data is incredibly valuable for market control and manipulation. Yes including your bowel movements. Micro optimising targeted ads is the exact goal. You are not privy to the absolute freak levels of optimising these companies are up to, including actively researching and then ignoring the ethical components. They know you better than anyone else on the planet, at least when it comes to marketing to you.
You are right though. This data shouldn’t be collected. But it IS collected, and they want you to think its no big deal.
They’re building a profile to predict and control and manipulate you. All those seemingly innocuous things you mentioned are not innocent. They all lead to a better picture of who you are, what motivates you and how to manipulate you.
I put temperature sensors all over my house, including in my garage. I was just messing around with home assistant at the time. At the start of this year we put some insulation on the garage door. So that means I just so happen to have two years of historical data to compare against to see if the insulation is useful and if so how useful.
All I’m saying is you never know when a data stream will become useful.
I can see the value in collecting such data but just forward it to my doctor and let me know if something is out of the ordinary. I have no interest in knowing how many steps I’ve taken or how badly I slept last night. It just induces more anxiety than it motivates change.
I think wearables with displays are almost as bad for most people as smartphones are. You just end up checking even more notifications and you’re doing it instantly. You think it’s subtle and can be done while in one-on-one conversation but it’s not. It’s no different than taking out your phone while someone is talking to you and that’s just rude.
I think it’s an unpopular opinion because not many people think about this aspect of it.
I like it, I think you’re right.
I’m so with you on this, I don’t need my scale to track my weight, I don’t need my watch to keep track of my sleep. All these numbers are just making life more complicated, life is already way too complicated, made so by other people beyond our control, so keep it simple I promise it’s worth it, we don’t need to gamify everything
I hadn’t mention the gamification detail but that is a thing also.
Your entire premise is based off the false idea that people like most of these things for the analytics. And not like…just a fun thing. I like to see who my top artists were in a year. It’s meaningless fun.
And health stuff is absolutely worth tracking. If you can’t see the value in that, I can’t help you
It depends. Health metrics, when used correctly, can be useful. I mean, back before smart devices some of us were taught to monitor our heart rates regularly with our fingers, a clock, and if you need to track this over time, a notebook. A smart watch just makes it a lot easier to do. Tracking stuff for health or habit is not a new idea (Benjamin Franklin, for example, promoted tracking behavior and thought in order to improve oneself) and it is useful. Trying to keep track of detailed information in your brain will not work because our brains just don’t do that very well, so we invented writing for that purpose.
That being said, tracking is only useful when you need to do it for a specific purpose, and often only in the short term barring exceptions. I tracked my water intake for a while to figure out how much dehydration was a problem for me, how much water I actually needed to feel more comfortable, and about how to schedule that so I could get the right amount each day without a tracker. I used tools to develop discipline, but which discipline is correct and effective. Otherwise, using subjective data only, we might just engage in self torture (ie, relying on what we believe or want to be the case, not necessarily what is the case). Similarly, I’ve been adding sensors in my home because it’s good to know the temperature, humidity, air quality etc especially when we’re curious about whether the devices we use for certain conditions are working, necessary, effective, etc. We made some serious quality of life improvements so far, too, thanks to that data.
The short of it is tracking is like doing research in a lab, but people treat it like a gimmicky toy. They don’t have a reason to monitor (whatever metric), they just like the idea of doing so, to feel like they live in science fiction.
Usage data to improve the UX?
Allow me my ignorance for a moment: on what?
Literally any software.
There is a very long list of things for which software is unnecessary and improvement even less.
The meme: toasters. No toaster needs software to work; electricity, a resistance and a mechanical timer is enough.
How is that at all relevant to the comment you’re replying to
You have seen the meme on the toaster with the touch screen that alts mid toasting bread, right? The toaster that supposedly has “smart” features to record how user X likes their bread. That is not something in need of registering.
The example is an obvious exageration.
Yes…but they obviously weren’t talking about extreme outliers like that.
You’re just wrong these are useful metrics not for everyone but for someone. Most companies cant use how much music you listen to but an ad agency can use it to target ads to you. A music company can use it to upsell you. A clothing company can use it to target products at you.
Bowel movements ad agency can target you with supplements, doctors can upsell, etc.
There are some people who think this is an invasion of privacy and some people who see this as an improvement as the products they’re being recommended are more accurate to things they actually want. I fall into the 1st and my sister falls into the 2nd. I thought she was crazy but it seems thats actually the majority opinion.
