Reporter-App

“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

I’m thrilled to launch my new app Reporter today. I’m indebted to the hard work of Drew Breunig and Friends of The Web for helping me finally bring this idea to life.

In 2011 Drew built the first working version of the app for me, and named it “Reporter”. It didn’t look like much, but the original app worked perfectly throughout 2012 and the data it produced culminated in my 2012 Feltron Annual Report. 

Reporter’s random prompts to answer a survey had made tracking the year a breeze and helped me to investigate questions that would have been impossible to answer using other methods. I was interested in who I spent time with, but to track this in an ongoing basis is a full-time job. I added questions for what I was wearing, eating or drinking and if I was working or not… and we streamlined the process to ensure that a report only took seconds to answer. We also added in background sampling to get information from the phone on the weather, my location and the ambient noise level.

That app is now all grown up. You can customize all the questions, and turn on a range of sensors to gather background data, and the app will visualize your responses. If you are interested in a lightweight means of exploring your behavior, give it a try.