Yay or Nay? "Pokémon Sleep shows the power and pitfalls of a gamified health app"
Yay or Nay? "Pokémon Sleep shows the power and pitfalls of a gamified health app"
One adorable week with Pokémon Sleep left me with some complicated questions about gamification in health apps.
I'm interested in what they're doing here, but a part of me just feels like going to live far away on a mountain completely off-grid and away from the digital world we've created
I've used it for a week now too. Specifically for sleep, it's good for tracking how much and how deep your sleep is each night, and for encouraging that healthy 8-hour interval we are supposed to get. A couple challenges I see are ensuring the data is accurate coming from a basic mobile phone app (this is no replacement for an actual clinical sleep study), the privacy concern that I would want to make sure the data, especially the sound recording, is absolutely private to me, and the pitfall that it may encourage sleeping as much as possible, perhaps to unhealthy levels, to encourage users to fill that sleep Dex.
Needs Apple Watch / WearOS sleep tracking integration or don’t bother
I’m not buying a Go+
Excatly. It is so dumb. I mean, just sync with Apple Health and import it.
Besides that, the app itself is not that fun to use. Was laying in bed after the first night of sleep and got a tutorial of around 15 minutes...
Nah. I don't need to gamify my sleep.
I have used it a few times. Especially if I haven't paid attention and mu Fitbit has died during the day so I can still track my sleep.
I kind of hate it, though. I appreciate the gamification, I guess, but when I'm trying to sleep and it's asking me to complete research and feed my Pokémon when I'm trying to go to sleep it seems...counter intuitive.
Overall, it's never going to replace my Fitbit which actually tracks my sleep with something other than sounds, but I'm open the the idea of gamifying my sleep, especially when I'm actively trying to improve it. I'm just not sure this is the way.
Utterly useless without connectivity to a watch device. I used both a mi band and let the game run on my mattress and the band actually noticed the times I woke up in the middle of the night and fell asleep again, while the phone just kept chugging on deep sleep. I can't trust its numbers.
Also, I'm lucky to have an actual OLED screen, so I'm not concerned about the way the game does screen off. But most don't and this game is way more wasteful too.
I’d be interested in it. But I personally like apps that “gamify” normal routine things because it’s the easiest way to hold myself accountable and have some self discipline.
Still have to try it, definitely looks cool. Especially if its true that recordings are not sent anywhere.