This time last year, I decided, instead of making a big New Years resolution like “exercise more” I’d break it into small actions. That small action I chose was to take 10,000 steps every day or 3.65 million steps before the ball dropped ringing in 2012.

To keep track of all those steps I’d need a pedometer, or to be more precise, a fitness device. Over the last year I’ve worn or carried a bunch of different devices. I made my FitBit the device of record for the year. Each morning I would clip on my FitBit and each night I’d set it on the night stand. On the few days it wasn’t charged or I forgot it, I would use another pedometer as a backup (I wear an average of 3 everyday).

Things I've worn/carried to count my steps in 2011

To get my average of 10K steps per day, I needed to change a few behaviors. First, I started taking the train into Boston. Then, I stated walking to the station. This accounts for the majority of my steps. I also play basketball once a week which helps rack up the steps. I kept track of my daily totals in a Google Spreadsheet so I was able to see how well (or not) I was doing.

Here are some stats from 2011:

Average steps per day: 11,123
Miles: 1,845

After taking more than 4M steps, I’ve become more conscious of my mobility and know not everyone is so fortunate. Don’t ever take your legs for granted. They are wonderful things that can take you to some amazing places. Happy New Year!

My New Years Resolution is to take 3.65 Million steps this year (10K per day). I just surpassed the 1 Million step mark and am less than 5000 steps behind on my goal. As the weather gets better, I’m hoping to get ahead of my goal so I have some wiggle room going into the winter months at the end of the year.

For anyone interested, I have posted my tracking spreadsheet. I need to find creative ways to get more walking in each day to stay on track. I find it motivating to have a daily goals. The overall goal is year end so I don’t feel guilty if I miss the 10K mark for the day, I just need to walk more the next few to catch up.

At MeYou Health we’ve send out a lot of email as part of our Daily Challenge. One of the things we struggle with is design constancy from browser to browser and with images turned on and off. While our emails are far from perfect, we’re learning and always trying to improve the experience. Here are a few tips we’ve discovered:

• Try to design without images first and only add images to enhance the design
• Never rely on images to convey the main message of your email.
• Use background colors to effectively design your email
• Use old school <table> HTML to code your email. No body likes this but it’s your best shot at getting something that is recognizable.
• Use table borders to create horizontal and vertical lines.
• Be conscious of how you use your “alt” tag

Here is an example of a Hewlett-Packard email rendered in Gmail with images turned off:

Hewlett-Packard email newsletter with images turned off

Hewlett-Packard  email with images turned on:

HP email with images turned on:

That’s my 2011 goal. The math is simple, 10K steps every day and I should complete the goal. According to several websites and pedometer companies like FitBit 10,000 steps is the magic number to maintain a moderate to active amount of daily activity.

To help track my steps I use a FitBit ($99).

My Walk to Work

It’s harder than I thought it would be and January’s weather didn’t help. I’m currently a little over 30K steps off pace. I’ll need to make up some ground when the weather gets nice. I average about 40 minutes of walking during my commute to and from the train.

Total Steps to date (updated via Google Docs)

A little over a year ago I started a new job at a new company called MeYou Health. I interviewed with all four of it’s employees and happily accepted a job as a user experience designer at a company without any products or services. Most of the early months were filled with hiring passionate, bright and thoughtful people.

As a designer, there is nothing more daunting or exciting than a blank canvas. Unsaddled with previous decisions and pressed with a complex task of building a consumer brand around health and well-being. Everyday brings new ideas, new hypothesis  and new designs to bridge the gap between accessible and effective well-being products.

Over the last year we’ve built a portfolio of products:

Daily Challenge – Everyday we email members a small action related to well-being. They have 24 hours to complete the task and mark it as done. We’ve added social and gaming mechanics to help efficacy and user engagement.

Monumental – An iPhone application that uses the internal accelerometer to detect stair climbing and allow users to virtually climb buildings and monuments around the world.

Well-Being Wire - Easily digestible health and well-being articles written designed to be quick and powerful reads.

EveryDrink - An Adobe Air application that you install to your computer’s desktop. It slowly fills with water reminding you to drink water before it overflows! If you are away from your desk it will send you a text message.

Change Reaction - A Facebook application asks users to do one small action for their well-being and they ask their friends to join them causing a change-reaction.

Twitter Well-Being Tracker (coming soon) – Allows you to take a survey and get your well-being score. Connect through Twitter and you can get the aggregate score of your followers who have also taken the survey.

Well-Being Bot (coming soon) – Each day we listen to over 2 million conversations taking place on Twitter. Each conversation is categorized into the six domains of well-being (Life Evaluation, Emotional Health, Physical Health, Healthy Behaviors, Work Environment, and Basic Access) and scored as positive or negative on a scale of 1-100. Each day the bot “tweets” the new score.

Well-Being Tweets (coming soon) – An application that curates twitter conversations about well-being and puts them in one convenient place.

In 2011 expect this list to be much longer…

Each day brings new challenges, new opportunities to be creative and a great environment to develop ideas. Everyone at MeYou Health is a contributor, a supporter and a friend willing to embrace or challenge ideas head as we all discover the best ways to bring our products to our customers.

The last year has provide me the opportunity to exercise my creativity stretch my curiosity and move with the speed of the market. I can’t wait to see what 2011 will bring!

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