I’ve been working hard for the past six months designing Rise, a new quantified self health tracker. It’s an accelerometer-powered device that sits on a person’s leg and helps them keep track of how much they’re sitting. Sitting, and being generally sedentary, have been linked to a whole host of health problems. Sitting too much can lead to blood clots in the legs in the short term, and diabetes and increased risk of heart disease in the long run.
The health problems that sitting causes are pretty simple to avoid: just sit less. Even getting up for just a few minutes every hour can have a marked impact on the health of the average office worker. So if it’s so easy to solve the sitting problem, then why did I spend so much time working on it?
It’s because sitting is insidious. People don’t notice how much they sit, and when they do notice it’s often because health problems are already starting to crop up. Rise, our sit tracker, will not only track how long a person has been sitting but send periodic alerts to let the wearer know its time to stand up and walk around for a bit. We’re building apps for both Android and iOS so that this is accessible to as many people as possible.
It’s been a fun project to work on, and a great extension of the research that I did when I got my Master’s. We’ve launched an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to help turn the prototypes into final products. I’m excited to see how the campaign goes, and to see my work actually get out into the world and help some people. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.