NudgeTop

As a long-time fitness tracker user, one of my greatest challenges has been extracting good insights about the data I’m generating every day. It’s easy to tell how many hours I’ve been sleeping, or how many steps I’ve been taking, but it’s a lot harder to actually pull that data into a cohesive whole.

 

Nudge, a free app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, is designed to make that easier. The app calculates a “Nudge Factor” score that’s designed to give users a look at how hard they’re actually working at being healthy. Users hook up their fitness tracking service of choice, including Fitbit, Jawbone, Moves and Strava, and Nudge automatically imports data and plugs it in to the algorithm.

More useful than the number, though, is that the score easily gives users an at-a-glance look at how healthy their lifestyle actually is in a variety of categories. Nudge judges users on their sleep, activity for the day, food and water consumption. If I slack off and forget to drink enough water, it will be reflected in my score.

It’s also designed to allow users to connect to their friends who use different fitness trackers. While Fitbit, Jawbone, Nike and others all have support for socializing with friends while exercising, each company keeps those interactions locked inside their own silos. People with friends who use different fitness trackers can use Nudge to compare fitness data while still having access to their tracker of choice.

In addition, Nudge includes a built-in social network that users can tap into. It includes a number of different communities centered around topics like food, running, biking and other subjects related to fitness, where users can ask questions and get advice. It’s also confined to a single tab within the app, so users who want to take advantage of the groups can do so, while people who would prefer to exercise in solitude can ignore them entirely.

unnamed-2There are a couple of drawbacks to the system, though: first, Nudge Factor is calculated once a day. That’s fine for infrequent check-ins to the app, but I’d like to see what sort of an impact taking an extra-long walk had on my score right after I was done taking it, rather than having to remember the following day that I exercised more than I usually do.

In a similar vein, the app doesn’t actually provide a fully accurate score until after users have been running Nudge for 30 days. Until the end of that period, users should expect to see their score rise on a daily basis. While it has been nice to see my Nudge score go up over the past couple weeks, I’d much rather have accurate feedback now than have to wait a month.

Still, I’ve tried out a number of services that try to unify users’ exercise data in one place, and Nudge is the best one I’ve seen so far. It’s definitely worth a look for people interested in improving their fitness tracking.

Nudge is available for free from the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.

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