Your iPhone and Apple Watch could one day hold you accountable for your fitness goals. Apple has been granted a patent (number US 11900831 B1) for “Fitness and Social Accountability.”
About the patent
The patent relates generally to management of user physical activity, and, more specifically, to computer-based processes and devices for motivating and managing user physical activity. Apple notes that, to improve the health of individuals, various tools for managing user health and physical activity have been developed. For example, activity monitors can track individual physical activity using various metrics such as steps taken, elevation climbed, distance traveled, calories burned, and the like.
While these monitors can track the amount of physical activity performed by a user, they fail to properly motivate users to engage in physical activity, according to Apple. In many instances, such monitors operate solely on an individual basis, and therefore fail to take advantage of group-based motivators of physical activity.
What’s more, such activity monitors may use complex and time-consuming user interfaces, which may require excessive key presses or user inputs. This means existing techniques may require more time than necessary, wasting user time and device energy.
Apple’s proposed solution involves systems and processes for motivating and managing user physical activity that are implemented using electronic devices with faster, more efficient methods and interfaces for motivating and managing user physical activity.
These systems and processes would provide for an “efficient notification management relating to user and group physical activity, thereby reducing the number of unnecessary or extraneous human-machine interactions and improving device functionality and efficiency.”
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Techniques described herein include receiving selection of information identifying one or more members for participating in a fitness session, a start time for the fitness session, and a duration of the fitness session. The techniques also includes receiving individual fitness metrics for the one or more members associated with the fitness session, the individual fitness metrics collected during a period of time corresponding to the start time and the duration of the fitness session.
“The techniques also includes presenting aggregate fitness data for the fitness session corresponding to the received individual fitness metrics for the one or more members associated with the fitness session during the period of time, and presenting at least a subset of the received individual fitness metrics for the one or more members associated with the fitness session during the period of time.”
