How I Lost Weight & Learned About APIs

Trying to stay in shape is one of those never-ending life battles that I’ve come to expect as I get older. I’ve bounced between being a healthy shape and a not-so-healthy one for years and I’ve managed to live life just outside the edge of ideal fitness. A few months back, I reached an apex point and dedicated myself to losing a few pounds (again) and set off on a journey to change my life (yet again). Little did I know I’d learn something about APIs along the way.

Everyone has their own way of losing weight but I’ve always preferred a measurable, rationalist approach: I count the calories I consume, I subtract the calories I burn and I budget accordingly. The nice thing is that this method forces me to think about what I’m consuming and what I’m doing. The massive downside is that keeping track of all of the data is a monotonous and soul-destroying effort that often leads to me giving up.

Of course, there is an app for everything now and I started using a tool to keep a log of foods that I ate along with their associated caloric burdens. One problem with this type of tool is that, while it’s easy to log consumption of food using features like bar code scanners and crowd-based data, the process of logging exercise and calorie expenditure is entirely manual. This can make fitness goals harder to achieve as users like me end up either under or over estimating their daily calorie burn.

Thankfully, devices to monitor your physical exertion do exist and they are reasonably affordable. These are wearable devices that provide a tally of steps taken, stairs climbed and physical exertion throughout the day, providing a wealth of personal data to mine. To be honest, I’d always viewed these devices in the same category as things like Google Glass – really cool pieces of technology that bleeding-edge enthusiasts wear publicly at the cost of their own dignity. But something changed for me when I realized that I’d be able to connect the calorie-counting app I was using with the wearable fitness device. So, I made a purchase.

By connecting the food-tracking application with the activity-tracking device, I was able to get a much more accurate picture of my caloric budget for the day. The systems integrated remarkably well and the quantification of remaining calories along with a few gamification features provided extra incentive for me to keep moving and eat less.

In the end, this behavioral conditioning of triggers, alerts and feedback loops worked well for me and I was able to drop a few pounds. Of course, I lost the tracker on an airplane about a month in and I’m currently racing back towards a pear shape but that isn’t the point. What is more interesting is what we can learn about integration from my journey:

1. An API is a Great Way to Extend Customer Reach to Platforms When we think about building APIs, we usually think about extending out to mobile devices or social platforms. But organizations should consider how their products can be extended to niche and non-traditional platforms that their target user base actively uses. If the wearable tracker I purchased didn’t work with the calorie-counting application I was already using, I never would have considered buying the tracker in the first place. But thanks to the API-based integration, I could visualize myself using it and this was the trigger that resulted in a purchase decision.

2. Integration is Becoming a Core Requirement Instead of a Feature Something I noticed when scanning the forums on the tracker device’s Web site was the number of posts related to integration with other exercise platforms. For this user base, integration with their favourite run-tracking, calorie-counting or fitness-gamification tools isn’t just a nice-to-have – it is the minimum expectation. It seems that end users are increasingly expecting product vendors to support their platforms of choice and want the freedom to make their own decisions. In other words, users don’t want to be punished for choosing a less popular tracking tool or a mobile phone operating system that has less market share.

3. Integration with Potential Competitors can Pay Off What I didn’t mention in my story was that the fitness tracker I purchased did come with a calorie-consumption-tracking feature. In fact, part of the revenue stream for this product is the sale of subscriptions to the manufacturer’s fitness portal, as part of an end-to-end fitness management program. This means that supporting out-of-the box integration with other fitness trackers actually comes at a potential revenue cost for the tracker vendor. But I would imagine that the overall revenue benefit from attracting customers like myself outweighs the revenue lost from users who choose not to subscribe to the portal. Integrating with competitive products can be a risky proposition but a smart gamble can really pay off.

As interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to increase, I expect to see an increasing variety of interesting device-to-platform integration stories. Businesses will need to have coherent business strategies for extending to this new world, with APIs as an important supporting action.

Also, if you happen to see me in person, don’t forget to tell me how great I’m looking nowadays.