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A Rough Idea Instrumented People, Places and Things Pockets sketch

Pockets: days in the life of a person, December 2013 to July 2014

What this is

Pockets is days in the life of one person. TJ: “pockets is about days in the life of a person.” The person is TJ, and the data is TJ's own, from apps and wearables TJ carried between 29 November 2013 and 8 July 2014.

It is one study in Instrumented People, Places and Things, a plan to publish work from around 2012 to 2014, when the Iota team at the agency SapientNitro in Chicago put sensors in rooms, on objects and on people. Its lens is the person. This page is a first sketch, with no model behind it yet.

Three views

Moves is the backbone: it is the one stream that runs through the whole period. The other streams overlap it only in two short stretches, and each has a view of its own.

    How to read it

    A row
    One day, from midnight at the left to midnight at the right, on Chicago's clock, even on trips. In the two detail views a day is a block, with a lane for each stream.
    Colour
    What the row shows at that time. The key is under the rows, and the menu over them switches between place, steps and screen time.
    Blank
    Not measured. It doesn't mean nothing happened: a stream stopped, or has no file for that day.
    Grey
    In place: at home. In steps and screen time: measured, and nothing counted.
    M F R B
    In All days, beside each date, a bar for each stream that day has. A bar at the right edge marks a day a detail view opens.
    A day
    Click a row or block. On the right are its path, its streams on one clock, and its records.
    The rest
    Point at it. Rows, dates, letters, keys, the map and each strip's name all say what they are.

    The streams

    Exports kept on TJ's drive, dated December 2013 to July 2014. Each bar marks the days a stream covers, in the months above it.

    What is estimated

    • Day types are a first sketch. Hand-set thresholds over each day's Moves totals, tried in this order: Away, Office, Out, Part recorded, Home, Near home. Not a model and not a finding. No weekday enters them, and neither does Fitbit, so its column is a first, weak check.
    Sketch typeDaysWkndFitbitSteps
    • The office and regular places are this sketch's assumptions. The office is the largest place that isn't home; regular means five stays or more. No file says so.
    • Place names are Moves's labels, not checked. They come from Foursquare's list or from TJ. Moves worked from GPS, and TJ has corrected at least one, a stop TJ did not make. A name is not proof of a visit.
    • Walking, transport and cycling are Moves's own labels, not checked.
    • Steps here are Fitbit's. On the 64 days with both, Moves counts a median of 41% of them, since it sees walks and not the steps between.
    • The clocks agree to about a minute where the streams can be compared (measured). None is shifted.

    Days to start from