So I got a Nike + iPod sensor for my birthday this year and I have to say that it was a pretty sick birthday gift. What made it even cooler was the fact that I’d just read about it in “Brand New World” by Max Lenderman (a great book by the way) and had been salivating over product reviews like they were Sarah Roemer movies.
Basically, the Nike+iPod is a beefed up pedometer that you can put in your shoe. And not only does it compute simple stats like distance, calories, and pace, but it gives you spoken feedback, lets you set goals, and records a history of your workouts. However, the system is really only half the equation. The really funky part is the online capability. From the Nikeplus website, you can create a profile for your fellow runners to see, and deck it out with your workout statistics (all neatly graphed out to chart progression), which you can easily upload by syncing your iPod to iTunes. This allows you to challenge friends as well as the biggest running fanatics all over the world, to see where you rank.
And after a few weeks of using the Nike + iPod, what I noticed was that suddenly, I was running much more frequently. It seemed that a number of things, all having to do with owning this new thing, contributed to my newfound love for running. The satisfaction of simply navigating to the app and watching it work its magic was great, while the thought that my efforts would be both recorded and shared with the world (you can share your workouts with Facebook and Twitter as well) also gave me a little boost. How about how I could actually see my improvements in solid numbers or how I could admire the “total workout distance” (the sum of all workouts) meter slowly inch up?
The Nike+iPod model was, in general, a fitness motivator.
So why can’t other products mimic this model? What if high schools and colleges did this with grades? When teachers entered marks into a student’s report card, they’d be automatically sent to a site that could track progress. We’d be able to track our progress in various subjects, over multiple years, and maybe even get advice from our teachers over the web. People could compare their progress to others and maybe, there could even be a leaderboard.
And what if a fundraising organization did this for donators? Users could track how much money they donated and their progression, thus putting pressure on them to slowly donate more to beat their own records. There could be a leaderboard in this sort of community as well, while rich folks would definitely get a kick out of challenging friends to donation competitions. I think people would really be happy about publishing their donations on social networks to add to their reputations.
What an idea!
