The moment I saw screenshots of Roundarch’s work on the real-time stats dashboard for the New York Jets’ new stadium I was smitten and not just because I’m a huge fan of the Jets (as well as Rex Ryan’s leadership model). I love how they’ve taken really complex information that spans different categories (food, parking, merchandise) and made it clear, accessible and actionable (and very much on brand, btw).
The Jets’ executive team gets:
What exactly is the system capable of? Let’s start with concessions and merchandise. While a game is underway, NY Jets’ owner Woody Johnson will see a four-panel layout that shows a variety of metrics, from gross spending to total transactions to average amount spent per transaction. The stadium is virtually divided up by each level, and Johnson can zoom in on individual stores and concession stands to see which jerseys are selling, or which beer isn’t. The stadium is heat-mapped too, so if lines are getting to long, mobile vendors can be directed to help ease the burden.
While the fans benefit as well:
The Command Center won’t just help managers and executives, but will soon aim to improve the fan experience as well. Cisco has invested $100 million into the stadium, and one rep estimates the company’s technology could provide fans with estimated wait times in the near future. The dashboard will also warn of choke points at stadium gates and concession stands, so fans can be informed of how to avoid the longest line for a burger, or the best way to exit after the game.
Companies have always had data at their disposal to use to help them make decisions but I think we’re going to start seeing companies seeing the value in thoughtful interface design as a window to that data and that makes me really excited.
Read more about it over at Fast Company
I recently came across Tonight.im, a clever little mashup that takes my data from my Withings Scale (highly recommended internet-connected scale) and maps it to my foursquare (highly recommended location-based service 
) checkins so I can visualize how some of the decisions I’ve made about the places I go – food, bars, cafes – may be impacting my weight gain/loss over time.
The interface is still quite spartan but the data seeds are there for some really interesting behavior analysis. I can’t wait to see where they take this service (they’re already teasing a Top Healthy & Unhealthy Places feature)
Sign up and keep an eye on Tonight.im.
To be totally transparent, I signed up for Hunch during their beta and subsequently went back a bunch of times to explore and answer questions but felt that I never really grokked the full meaning of what they were doing.
Fast forward a few months, Chris Dixon posts a link to a Hunch Census Widget on Twitter. I gave it a go and was totally delighted + fascinated with the product. Additionally, I immediately understood the importance and complexity of what they’re pulling off at Hunch.
Anyway, I wanted to give it a go here on everydayux to allow everyone to get a better sense of everyone else on the blog, and in the process try and demystify the value of Hunch to anyone out there who might be in the same boat I was. It doesn’t take much time and I highly recommend you go all the way through to get the most of it. Post your thoughts in the comments and I’ll follow up with another post showing the aggregate community results.
Thanks for playing!
With just a snippet of extra code, get a great looking report on how mobile users are accessing your site. Here’s a look at a full report. (via teendrama)
Along similar lines, though not nearly as visually impressive, as Dopplr’s Annual Report, I noticed today that the Nike+ site gives you the option to get a “rundown” on 2008. Check out mine above. Seeing this now makes me upset that I took a few months off from Nike+. Damn you, wasted data! (If a run happens and Nike+ doesn’t capture it, did it really happen?)
It’s great to see so many people finally realizing that you can be clever about the data you’re collecting from the ongoing usage of your product. Giving this kind of info back to your users, if done right, can go a long way towards strengthening their connection with your product. Nike could have gone a bit further (and I bet they will next year) but this is definitely a step in the right direction.
Corey Menscher, an ITP student I had the pleasure to meet this week while checking out the awesome final projects from Dennis Crowley’s class, has built a clever sensor-based device for pregnant women to wear that senses the baby’s kicks and initiates a Twitter message for all those not carrying the baby to share in the experience. I love this stuff.
The Java application receives the sensor values and analyzes them. When a kick event is detected, a Twitter message is posted via the Twitter API. I chose to use Twitter because it is easy to initiate an SMS message to any mobile phone when a kick is detected. It also acts as a data log that can be accessed programmatically for visualization or archiving.
Check out the output here.
Read all about Kickbee here (via psfk)
PS: He’s also building a super cool location-based trivia + scavenger hunt called Geogeni.us (something many have tried and almost all have failed) for Dennis’ class. In my opinion, Geogeni.us is handling one of the major stumbling blocks to these kinds of apps (solution confirmation) in a really clever way (hint: solutions tied to locations). Check it out!
Imagine all the cool apps you could build on top of this.
Judging by the upcoming potential budget cuts and slashed lines, I don’t see something like this in our MTA’s future. Sniffle.
… basically this is the type of data that drives the signs you see on the L train ("Next Train: 25 minutes"). Now imagine building this into an iPhone app or something so whenever you are standing over a subway station (GPS!) the phone can tel you whether it’s worth going in and paying the $2 (vs. you sitting around waiting 45 mins for the next train)…. or your phone buzzing with an SMS before you leave your apt for work / airport/ night out letting you know the F train is on fire / delayed 20 minutes / etc
Read more over at Dennis’.
Disclaimer: While I am an Obama supporter and really appreciate that his campaign is the one that’s finding new ways to leverage technology (and in turn engage new groups of voters), the features that make this app is so great are smart in and of themselves.
Back to the app!
I can’t say enough about how impressed I am with the Obama ’08 iPhone app (iTunes link) that was released yesterday. The thoroughness and the polish really shows how a political process so often stuck in the past can really be revolutionized in 4 short years.
My favorite things about the app:
- Sorting your contacts by battleground states first and noting whether or not I’ve called them yet
- Leveraging location to help you find local events, debate watching parties, etc.
- Well-organized display of where BO stands on all the major issues making it dead simple for people to educate themselves (and in turn, educate others)
- Persistent, easy (almost too easy) way to donate
- Easy access to national, state, and local news regarding the campaign
There are, of course, other features that you’d expect: sign up for alerts + watch videos (I’d like tighter integration with the video player a la MLB At Bat).
Anyway, I highly recommend you check it out to get a glimpse at how politics (and political movements) are changing in a way that, I imagine, no generation before us has witnessed.
Read more about it here.
Now I’m going to go back to my side of the aisle real quick…
I tweeted about this yesterday but I enjoy imagining what features a quickly hacked together McCain/Palin iPhone app might have: A random newspaper name generator? “Places one can drill” game? 101 ways to work the word “maverick” into a sentence? What else?
On Friday, I went to Sports Medicine at Chelsea to get a second opinion on my shoulder. Apart from Dr. Clifford Stark being an excellent, patient and thorough doctor (harder to find these day’s than one would like) who managed to determine what is ailing me (a bad case of tendonitis of my biceps tendon), his office was outfitted with this neat tablet for filling out all of that initial information you need to provide a new doctor upon your first visit.
Compared to the usual poorly-designed forms you’re asked to fill out, this was a breeze and apart from one slightly confusing screen, the usability was great.
Nice to see technology used to improve what is often a painful and inefficient process. NOw to see if he can do something for my crunchy knees…
Whitney Hess recently did an analysis of her activity on Twitter using Tweet Clouds and TweetStats. Reading her post inspired me to do the same. Here’s what I came up with (btw, I stripped out the @replies to focus more on the content of the messages) :
I think it would be interesting to look at people’s tweets through a Freudian filter. What would he make of the prominence of words like “happy”, “hoping”, “trying”, “watch”, “think”, “time”, “new” and “season”?