Fitbug

My employers recently decided to try for a fitter, healthier workforce and gave us all a gadget called a Fitbug. This is a digital pedometer that counts your steps. But it’s not just a dumb step counter that counts your daily steps, oh no, this is a smart step counter. It keeps a record of when the steps were taken, and stores that all in a memory. It can store up to 2 weeks worth of data, but the idea is that you upload the results to a website where it leaves a permanent record of your activity. Through the website you have access to a graphical interface where you can compare across days, or look at the detail of which hours you were active on any given day. Furthermore, if you walk for 10 minutes or more without a break, the Fitbug deems that to be aerobic exercise, and counts the steps as Aerobic steps. They then give you a target for how many steps you should be doing each day, and how many should be aerobic. Then they set you a target for how many of each kind of steps you need to do. Based on your performance against target, they colour-code each day’s activity: grey – not enough steps; green – enough steps, but not enough aerobic; blue – enough aerobic steps, but not enough total steps; pink – target achieved. So you get a graph that looks like this:

Now of course the most obvious question is: what do you do with this information? Well, it beats me! The best use I can think of is that if you’re in the habit of exercising regularly and you notice that you’ve had a very active day, you can skip today’s exercise session and save time. That seems kind of contrary to the spirit of the thing. To be honest, I have actually walked instead of driving a few short journeys recently so that I get the steps. But not enough to make a real difference.

My conclusion – if you’re motivated to get fit, it might help you. If you’ve got a lazy, unfit and out of shape workforce, you need more than a gadget to get them motivated.