Fitbit is launching a brand new Sleep Profile characteristic for premium members that can categorize customers as certainly one of six animal characters, the corporate introduced at the moment. Customers are grouped primarily based on 10 sleep metrics — 5 of that are new to Fitbit.
The analysis group wished to present folks extra details about how they sleep, says Karla Gleichauf, the senior analysis scientist at Google who led the analysis for the characteristic. “We have been additionally influenced by some enjoyable issues, like sport design or the Harry Potter quizzes about what home you’re in,” she says. “Folks like to be categorized. So, we mentioned, ‘I feel that is simply actually enjoyable’ — it’s one other sort of id to folks.”
For instance: Fitbit co-founder James Park is a dolphin, Gleichauf says. Folks with dolphin sleep animals are inclined to go to mattress at variable instances, fall asleep late, and take a lot of naps. Once they do sleep, although, it’s very restful. “These are individuals who have loads of space for enchancment,” she says.
The characteristic seems much like Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 sleep teaching program, which assigns customers certainly one of eight sleep varieties — every related to an animal. Samsung then prompts customers to start out a program to enhance sleep high quality.
To construct the brand new Fitbit characteristic, the analysis group checked out a month’s price of sleep knowledge from round 60,000 customers to create the assorted profiles, Gleichauf says. The group began with 1,000 totally different options and examined numerous machine studying algorithms to finally zero in on six totally different classes of sleepers. (Respectively: giraffe, bear, dolphin, hedgehog, parrot, and tortoise.) The six teams every have distinct attributes, just like the dolphin, which is thought for waking up extra simply, and the parrot, which tends to have a constant bedtime.
The ultimate characteristic offers customers details about 10 metrics, all of which feed into the general Sleep Profile. 5 exist already in different elements of the app — like sleep period and REM sleep. 5 others are new and simply obtainable within the Sleep Profile. These embody issues like bedtime consistency, days with naps, and time earlier than sound sleep.
Folks need to sleep with Fitbit a minimum of 14 nights every month to get their Sleep Profile.
The analysis group validated the profiles and metrics by means of two research that checked out folks’s notion of their very own sleep, Gleichauf says. One checked out knowledge from 1,000 individuals who assessed their sleep on the Pittsburgh Sleep High quality Index together with utilizing Sleep Profile and located that the outcomes lined up with their sleep animals, she says.
The group additionally performed a separate examine of round 18,000 folks utilizing the profile to test the ‘time earlier than sound sleep’ metric. The examine tracked sleep behaviors, perceptions and habits over just a few weeks and used the outcomes to tweak the algorithm for that metric, Gleichauf says. “It tries actually get at that actually laborious query of — how lengthy did it take you to really feel such as you fell asleep?” she says. “That’s completely new to Fitbit.”
Proper now, the Fitbit Sleep Profile simply affords an evaluation of somebody’s sleep. However finally, Gleichauf says, the characteristic may broaden to present folks details about how they may enhance the metrics that their profiles present they most must work on. “I feel the month-to-month sleep evaluation is the important thing to offering that customized steering as a result of it pinpoints these are the areas that — for those who’re — you possibly can enhance,” she says.
