2013: The Year of the Quantified Self

eMarketer noted in August 2012 that about 50% of Americans over the age of 14 owned a smartphone and by 2016 almost 75% of all mobile phone accounts will use smartphones. As the proliferation of GPS-enabled smartphones continues, many people now have the ability to track their movements like never before. Many are geared towards fitness (Strava and Runkeeper track running and cycling), an astounding number are geared towards tracking vehicle mileage (Trip Cubby and TripLog for example), while Moves tracks your every move. These apps provide a plethora of information and data about your trips including time, distance, speed, elevation, calories burned, steps taken, fuel saved – the list goes on - and analyzes them against previous entries to determine personal bests and other achievements.

There is an increasing trend towards tracking one’s own actions in general, be it travel, workouts, eating habits, spending habits; whatever you want to track about yourself, there’s probably an app for it (like DateMate, in case you date so much you can’t keep track of who’s who!). In 2007, Wired magazine coined the term the Quantified Self – “self-knowledge through numbers” – which has evolved into a movement where people meet up to exchange the exciting facts and figures they’ve tracked about themselves. While these old fashioned face-to-face sessions are popping up in cities across the world, the social media element of many of these apps allows users to compare personal achievements with family, friends, coworkers or random strangers through leaderboards and virtual badges to add an element of competition.

It has been said that 2013 will be the year of the Quantified Self, driven by the launch of a number of excellent apps and websites, and, importantly ‘wearable’ technologies such as Jawbone and the Nike+ Fuelband that monitor movement in real time. Apple are expected to join the party with the launch of the iWatch later this year.

So, what does this mean for transportation planners and TDM practitioners?

The desire for personal data collection via smartphones and wearable technologies is particularly intriguing in the context of TDM and reducing SOV trips because there may be an increasing desire to track and monitor one’s travel if the output provides something that people can analyze about themselves.

Trip logging tracking websites have largely been successful, but what we really want to see is trip logging systems integrating dynamic and contextual information that people can actually use to influence the next trip they take. A simple trip logging app that allowed users to log their trips on the move would go a long way to satisfying the desire for personal quantification in a convenient way and using that app to promote local TDM initiatives seems like a natural evolution. Steer Davies Gleave is currently developing an app that, first and foremost, tries to make trip logging easy: it uses the phone’s GPS to record travel throughout the day without draining the battery of your smartphone. Customizing the app to support local TDM programming will be the next step, including context sensitive ‘push’ messaging for challenges, new cycle routes and transit ticketing offers.

What is of utmost importance is that quantifying one’s own actions has to be simple, easy and convenient and has to provide an array of interesting, useable and fun data. Individuals have to be able to compare themselves with others because people need that social barometer to let them know where they stand among their peers (as well as encouraging a bit of friendly rivalry!). So, if 2013 is the year of the Quantified Self, we better get cracking on capitalizing on that hunger for numbers with a side of travel behavior change.