Fitness games are an important and growing segment of the health and fitness landscape, and we’re very happy to have some several fantastic partners implementing games on top of the Health Graph (@healthgraphapi). Case in point: Nexercise (@nexercise), our featured partner this week.
Bill Day: Please tell us about yourself and your company.
Benjamin Young: I’ve been managing and delivering business and information technology solutions for the last twelve years. I love working on things that allow me to blend my creativity and entrepreneurial passion. I’ve worked in software development, product management executive positions and co-founded C.Y. Strategy, a boutique strategy and management-consulting firm focused on providing advisory services to early and mid-stage ventures. I’ve also worked on voice application systems and managed research in unstructured data analytics.
My latest venture, Nexercise aims to tackle obesity in America by turning fitness into a fun and interactive game. I originally conceived of the idea from personal frustrations with maintaining my weight while simultaneously working, going to school, and raising two children. Since the beta launch of Nexercise in August, the game has already grown to over 35,000 users.
BD: What is the “elevator pitch” for why someone should use Nexercise?
BY: Nexercise makes fitness FUN. It’s a new and exciting way to get motivated, lose weight, and stay in shape. You can play with friends, earn rewards, defeat challenges, and track your progress on the largest fitness mobile interactive game of its kind.
BD: How did you get started using the Health Graph API?
BY: We reached out to RunKeeper and you were extremely helpful. Your team pointed us to some great resources, including an open source iOS project in Github that enabled us to speed up our development time. [Editor's note: Our Health Graph libraries page links to that and other third party libraries, wrappers, and related tools.]
BD: How is using the Health Graph benefiting your business?
BY: The Health Graph adds a new level of analytics and tracking for our users. Nexercise is great at making a motivational game experience and collecting data from a user’s workouts. We did not, however, build out a set of tools to give the user detailed insight on more “quantified-self” metrics like the capabilities RunKeeper provides. The integration was a perfect fit on capabilities! We make fitness fun and RunKeeper makes fitness and health data insightful.
BD: Which portions of the Health Graph API do you use, and why?
BY: Currently we allow users to link to the Health Graph and post their activities. This will enable them to get more insight into their fitness activities.
BD: What do you like about the Health Graph? What would you like to see changed?
BY: We like the simplicity and ease of use. We’d like to see a full iOS SDK to speed up integration.
BD: If you could request any new feature from the Health Graph, what would it be? How would you use it?
BY: We would love to see extended capabilities like interest discovery: You would recommend other users to connect, based on fitness level, location, interests, and activities.
BD: Can you share any future plans for your app? What’s coming next that your users will be excited about? Does the Health Graph play a role in that, and if so, how?
BY: We plan to expand functionality to provide Health Graph API users with additional customized game experiences based on their information. Additionally we will eventually allow users to get credit (experience points, virtual medals, and rewards) for activities not recorded using the Nexercise app.
BD: Is there anything else we should know about you or your application?
BY: Yes. It’s currently available on the Apple App Store. We will be coming to Android soon, so if you have an Android phone please sign up for early access by clicking here.
Cross-posted from the Health Graph blog.
Tagged: analytics, Android, api, benjaminyoung, challenges, credits, developers, fitness, games, github, healthgraph, insight, iOS, iPhone, libraries, medals, mobile, nexercise, obesity, partners, partner_profiles, play, points, Recommended, rewards, Running, tracking, weight, Wireless
