Making the Switch

My new phone is pretty sweet!

Recently, I won a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone in an AT&T company raffle. After the initial surprise of “I never win these things!” wore off, I had a choice to make. Up until now, I’ve had an iPhone 4 and I was thinking of upgrading to 5 around Christmas, but this presented a whole new option. On one hand, there are a lot of things I don’t like about Apple business practices. On the other hand, I was worried about having to repurchase all of my apps, accessories, etc. The final decision was made by my feet — after Apple Maps gave me walking directions that suggested that I walk along a major highway, down two dark alleyways, and scale a cliff to get to a destination. So, I made the switch and I wanted to share my experience here.

Things that I like about the S3 (other than navigation and developing for it, which pretty much everybody likes better on Android):

  • Swype typing lets me draw the words on the screen. I can actually effectively answer my emails on the phone now.
  • NFC means that I can easily share data with other NFC phones just by touching them, but also I’ve been experimenting with NFC tag stickers that you can use to program phone behavior. For example, when I touch my phone to an NFC tag near my home’s entrance, it connects to my WiFi, turns off my 3G, and checks me into my house on FourSquare. The things I can control are still fairly limited, but I can see a lot of potential for this in the future.
  • Large and wide screen means that I can now comfortably read and (more importantly to me) draw on the screen with a stylus. Is it too big? Well, phones were already too big for my jeans, so even though it’s bigger, there is no change in my practices. I still have to put it in my jacket pocket or backpack most of the time.
  • Desktop widgets and shortcuts. I like not having to open an app to start my music, check something off my todo list, or check my calendar. I like that I can just have a shortcut to the Google Spreadsheet that I use for my Happiness Project, instead of always having to go through the list of my docs.
  • Finally being free from iTunes and iPhoto! Now I can just transfer the music that I want on the phone or the photos I want off the phone with AirDroid, which is great!
  • Google Marketplace is better than the Apple App Store because you can try an app for a bit and then return it for a refund if you didn’t like it. I frequently buy apps to see what they are like or to take a screenshot of some aspect of it, so this is probably going to pay for the entire cost of the transition in about a year.

Things that I don’t like:

  • EpicWin my favorite gamified to-do list app is not available for Android. Woe is me! Astrid is pretty good as a to-do list, but I really want to get points for doing stuff.

So, in terms of my user experience, the transition was worth it, but it definitely cost a bit in terms of replacing apps and accessories:

  • Stuff I would need anyway for a new phone (protective case and an anti-glare screen protector): $18
  • Repurchasing stuff I already had (apps, a dock for my bedside, car charger): $45
  • Things that I didn’t need with the iPhone that I want now (NFC tags, stylus, new apps, car mount): $70

So, if you’re thinking about switching, those costs are definitely something to figure into the decision. Have any of you recently switched your phone? What prompted the switch and what was the experience like?

Sharing Happiness Project Data

[Excel Data Spreadsheet]

My daily sums (between 0 and 7) for my Happiness project dailies, as well as a 7-day trend line. Click for bigger image.

I recently ran into a coworker who keeps a blog with all of his data collected over a period of one year (Chris Volinsky and his “My Year of Data” blog). This is part of a larger movement of Quantified Self — which is about gaining self-knowledge by measuring various aspects of one’s life. I wanted to share my own data from a self-tracking project that I’ve been doing for the past 5 months (ever since my defense). I’ve been doing this kind of mindlessly for awhile so I’m using this blog entry as an opportunity to reflect.

I’ve been tracking myself as I do a variation of the Happiness Project, which is a book/blog that suggests for one to explicitly identify the aspects of life that are important to happiness and track them daily. After trying to do a few things each month, as suggested in the book, I switched to a more holistic approach. So, I track 7 daily items and 5 weekly items that I think are big components of being happy for me. Six of the 7 daily items (one removed for privacy) include: exercise, meditation, sleep, work, social relationships, and planning/reflecting on my day. The 5 weekly items are volunteering my time, exploring something new, reading for fun, dealing with a pesky task, and writing or drawing in this blog. I make all of this data for the past 5 months available as an Excel Data Spreadsheet.

Here are the few bits of insight that I got from this exercise:

  • One of my goals was to prevent “screw it” days where something went wrong so I didn’t do anything. Well, that kind of worked, I had no days with the score of 0 and only four days with the score of 1.
  • Even major life events such as turning in my final thesis, graduating, spending almost an entire month traveling for back-to-back job interviews, and moving from GA to NJ don’t slow me down as much as videogames. All the major dips were times when I started a new videogame. Is this enough to stop me? Not before Pokemon White 2!
  • Tracking alone is not enough (my overall trend is currently negative). I need to actually set goals. Late-May, early-June, I was on the quest for the “perfect week” and it shows in the data. Later on I tracked, but just tried to “do my best” and that wasn’t as successful.

I really just plopped my data in Excel, which limited my insights, but here is what I would like to be able to do easily with this kind of data (*cough* make this for me, please *cough*):

  • See how different tracked values interrelate and how each behavior affects the overall score. For example, is getting sleep very highly correlated with an overall high score? Or is it that if I sleep a lot, I don’t have time for anything else?
  • Understanding why and where I struggle. What goals are most challenging? What days of the week are most challenging? Who are the people in my life who motivate me the most for each behavior (I don’t have contact tracked, but it would be doable to mine my calendar and phone to understand who I talked to that day)?
  • Suggestions for achievable goals or games that I can do to keep myself motivated. For example, I had the idea of “perfect week,” but maybe there could be more focused games to keep things interesting. How about “healthy 10,” 10 days where I focus on sleep and exercise? Or “month of meditation,” where I try to do that every day for a month. Just something that will give me a bit of variety and something to focus on. Gamification really works for me, so I want something customizable where I can get help setting up goals and badges and such.

Is anybody else out there tracking something interesting? How are you analyzing this data to get insights?

Cat Got Your App

Oh hai, I’m Chewie!

I have been thinking about starting a series of posts called “N of One,” where I observe or interview one person about doing something interesting and report the results here. However, today is my blogging day and I find myself alone with my cat, so it seems like my first “N of One” is going to be about Animal-Computer Interaction. In this episode, Chewie (actually, Chui, but no need to be formal here) experiments with several different cat games for the iPad.

So, here we go. (1) We started out with the free version of the GameForCats laser game. I already knew that this is a game she would enjoy and indeed, she gleefully scored several points in the game. Rating: 10/10!

(2) I upgraded ($1.99) to the full version which unlocked the mouse and the butterfly games, but Chewie was freaked out by the loud noises both animals made when caught and chose to observe the movement from afar instead. Rating: 4/10.

(3) Chewie got bored with watching the iPad and found that my wallet was more fun to bat around.

(4) To get her attention back, we downloaded the app Cat Games for $0.99 ($0.25 to Humane Society). Unfortunately, all the games in this app failed to get Chewie engaged in interacting. The laser and tarantula games didn’t give any feedback when you caught them. Some of the other games actually made dog sounds, which spooked her. The only part that she liked was the cat meow that was the chime whenever I interacted with the interface. Rating: 5/10.

(5) Next, we downloaded Cat Toys Lite (free). This did get Chewie’s attention again. The mouse made funny sounds, that weren’t too loud. Rating: 8/10.

(6) Chewie kept nudging the iPad up with her nose. I think she thought that the mouse was actually underneath.

(7) Okay, so the first app seemed to be the clear winner, but I wanted to make sure that this wasn’t just Chewie getting bored with video games. So, at the end we returned to the GamesForCats laser game … and it still really got her attention and really got her engaged with it!

In conclusion, my cat seems to prefer free apps. Anybody else torture amuse their cat with iPad games? How did it go?