The #DailyRambleFit: May 9 2019

in actifit •  6 years ago  (edited)

If I’m sat here and posting today’s #DailyRambleFit it means that I have achieved the #daily10k again.

Which could mean two things:

  1. Actifit didn’t crash on me;
  2. I truly am more active than I thought myself

Yet, @actifit’s biggest problem is that even after many months actifit still does its utmost best to put and keep the Minimum in MVP (Minimum Viable Product). I am a fan of MVPs but things shouldn’t stay MVPs for life. There has to be more to it, the MVP is methodology — or lean school — also embraces the ship often and break things (fast) ethos. Yes, I do understand the struggles of startups and also the specifics of Steem.

I have previously called the actifit report a chore, even said that actifit excels at making one a slave of habits. As if that weren’t bad enough yet, actifit forces me to stay connected with a purpose later than I care every day. But that’s probably because I am an achiever and goals do work for me, thus whenever it seems achievable I will aim for the #dailytenk. Daily 10k without digits this time because the Steem blockchain doesn’t accept digits in tags.

7DC69B5E-1FA6-4331-846F-7B44983F1252.jpeg

Often also go for a late evening, almost midnight walk — sometimes even a jog — and more often than not I have already posted my report then. Which, of course, makes an activity tracker rather useless if the reports are based on less than full activity.

In fact, I will most likely go for a 20 minutes pre-midnight jog shortly after posting this report. Yet I do not want an app to dictate my life more than (mobile) devices do already every day.

While the best MVP improvement actifit could implement would be autoposting the daily report every midnight — within everyone’s time zone — I understand that not everyone is a fan of such type of automation, nor does everyone have a device which would allow such due to hardware limitations. Many may also wish to manually enter their daily ramble.

Alternatively, the second best option - and probably wiser one to implement - would be to allow people to report only the activity report of the previous day, rather than the actual day’s. That would then result in everyone reporting a complete 24 hours and would make much more sense when Actifit decides to evolve beyond MVP and starts to offer genuine daily, weekly, and monthly stats.

Besides, what is the worth of an activity report if often it lacks 10% or more?

Technically it shouldn’t be that much of an issue to implement that change either.

Without a doubt the daily fitters would throw a fit because they will miss one day, and thus an upvote, if Actifit were to switch to reporting the full previous 24 hours rather than the actual day but when didn’t social media communities throw tantrums when change happened?

Exactly.

[Politely adding a @mcfarhat tag to this post]


Scoop: Starting next Monday I will host a weekly “Interactive Actifit Post” with other Steem based rewards. I used quotes mostly because it seems that in last two years it has become the standard to emphasize interactive if any user interaction is required. Our friends over at the Guardian call onclick show of content interactive if in a listicle. Other bloggers often seem to call requirement to comment interactive.

Who am I not to go with the flow and fashions, right?

10713
Daily Activity, Walking

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Reporting on previous day (full cycle) is a must. It's the single most frustrating thing about Actifit at the moment.

But then again, I am skeptical of the current model as a whole. Is it a alternative blog platform? Not really. Is it something to actually get people fit, get lots of users, and then partner with programs that can grow together? That seems like a better fit, but has a lot of competition. "Social fitness" category. I point to sweatcoin as something that is already in that direction and has partnerships with redemptions for their centralized points. Someone told me about another one too... Ah it was called Achievement.

Posted using Partiko Android

Scepticism and the “lacking must” (previous full cycle reporting) need not be mutually exclusive. :D

10713 steps today, good jobs @fknmayhem

Posted using Partiko Android

Thanks for this great write up @fknmayhem!

I'm guessing being a slave to a good habit (being active) is a good thing lol, and yes we do try to leverage the competitive side among people, that is a big and positive drive when put to good use.

Indeed Actifit is a POC, MVP, ... you name it, and we certainly do not plan on keeping it that way. We did have several iterations in the past to improve the app, the last of which was for the iOS version couple of months back.

We have been doing tons of effort on other fronts, that we did not have the time to work on releasing new app versions recently. Funding is one aspect we have been working to secure that would help speed things up massively.

In terms of those functionalities you highlighted, we had actually decided recently to move ahead with the "yesterday post" feature, and make the option of posting your yesterday's activity as part of the app. Meaning users can post the second day. Although we want this to be an option not the norm, especially for people who are missing posting on time, and to keep the challenge going, the rewards associated will be decreased when posting the second day.

We should be including this functionality as part of our upcoming app updates.

You are more than welcome to always come up with feedback, ideas and suggestions. Thanks again!

yes we do try to leverage the competitive side among people, that is a big and positive drive when put to good use.

Peer pressure is generally a main factor of keeping people going. Apps like Argus and Runkeeper thrive on comparison among peers. With advanced stats mostly for people who take exercise more serious. Same with Strava and Endomondo.

I am definitely looking forward to the badge evolution and also "feed activities" at some point.

Although we want this to be an option not the norm, especially for people who are missing posting on time, and to keep the challenge going, the rewards associated** will be decreased when posting the second day**.

This seems counter-intuitive to me for an app which targets the health/activity market. Any fitness and wealth app worth its salt will recommend people a solid night's sleep and going to bed to around 10pm. I'm not a slave to activity, I'm doing rather well there. I'm a slave to having to submit my proof of activity.

Admitted, this is driven by personal bias but I can live healthierly [sic] when I can mentally disconnect, pun intended, latest around 9PM. That doesn't mean I'm not active anymore, being the night owl I am. But in the world of Actifit that would mean that I am always the sucker on duty: whether I opt for a healthy dopamine and obligarion free evening and submit 10-15% activity less each day or I am penalized because I submit a full cycle within xx after the cycle is completed.

All while that should actually be automated but that's a different can of worms so let's not open that one. Apple Health, Google Fit, your preferred manufacturer app... they all run 24/7 and record 24/7. Which is why they work so well for people, because no interaction is required. Same applies to last.fm and Dropbox for example. They are holy shit tools because they work without required effort.

So a minority of people are indeed slave of their Actifit posting obligation if they happen to have a different biorhythm. Despite that being counter to general health advice. A penalty by an activity app for a healthier life seems quite the contradiction. That's absolute poor design.

Rather than adding a feature for the sake of adding the (demanded) option, it feels to me that there could be a need to challenge the core focus and spirit of Actifit.

Rewards "penalties" shouldn't happen because they are for the activity. Submitting proof of activity should not become a burden and possibly carry a penalty with it. The activity is the main factor here, not the proof. The manual proof submission is IMHO a MVP workaround. Just my 2sat.

As always, appreciate your thoughts on this.

I agree with apps running 24/7, which we do for tracking. At this stage, Actifit losing interaction with its users defies the purpose of growth and proving to the world that it has a serious and active community.

The interaction we get from the community, the manual posts, is something we believe provides more proof that ppl want to earn rewards. We are continuously fighting abuse, and that is one aspect we want to keep away, as automation opens more doors for abuse. Actifit was attacked several times for being an abuse factory, and i haven't seen such attacks for a long time now as we have moved away from that category with all the efforts in place.

Another way to think of manual posting, as a sort of gamification (yes many other features are being aimed towards this), games do not normally automate your interaction with them, at least thats not how we perceive it. And the rewards are really for the proof of activity, again at least for now.

Again, long term approach can change as the platform grows, and i do like your thoughts about this.

Oh the abuse, heck yeah. That was what I referred to with Steem specific issues. All too aware of that. Steemhunt has had its fair share and I can but imagine how things are for Actifit.

Also the "funding" topic, or let's rather call it bootstrapped team. I do have a startup background. :)

Actifit now has one new major asset already. Badges. They will allow you to progress to best of gamification and also the topic discussed here IMHO.

BTW I missed yesterday's report because I was at 3.5k only at 9.30PM and thought will go for a late evening run after the Premier League games end... instead of going for a run I crashed. 😂

PS: Sweatcoin is automated. And I bet a device nightmare for the devs. Also, their GPS - sweatcoin's solution against abuse and thus limited to outdoor steps for now - did register running on track but then the steps were scrubbed out upon submission and I bet that was due to GPS tracking thinking too close. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Congrats on providing Proof of Activity via your Actifit report!

You have accordingly been rewarded 62.75 AFIT tokens for your effort in reaching 10713 activity, as well as your user rank and report quality!
You also received an 1.10% upvote via @actifit account.
Actifit rewards and upvotes are based on your:

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To improve your user rank, delegate more, pile up more AFIT tokens, and post more.
To improve your post score, get to the max activity count, work on improving your post content, improve your user rank, engage with the community to get more upvotes and quality comments.

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Hi @fknmayhem!

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