There’s a Graph For That: How This Pretty App Turns Your Days Into Charts
It’s almost the time of year for spring cleaning and if you can check closets and cabinets off your list after all of these snow days, maybe it’s time to do a little organization of the (very) interior kind. For $3.99, Reporter is an app that can help with that. It pings you throughout the day to take randomly-timed surveys, using the data it collects to quantify your life into little charts and graphs. And it’s very good-looking.
We have to admit. When we first heard about Reporter, we thought the surveys would be of the fun variety, but this isn’t going to help enlighten you as to which Golden Girl you are. Reporter is not another app to distract you from your day, but it might be a tool that makes those days better by helping point out a couple things you’ve missed.
You have the option to customize, edit or create your survey questions, but the standard “reports” cover a range of facts and feelings. “How did you sleep?” gives you options on a scale from good to bad. “Are you working?” is a simple yes/no, while “What are you doing?” lets you expand a little. Keep these short, sweet and similar to hashtags, so they are easier to group once your data spreads out across multiple days. When it asks who you’re with, you can write in someone’s name or choose from your contacts.
When Reporter asks “Where are you?” it pulls in your location, weather, noise level and any photos you took that day in that area giving you an organized, if not slightly sterile, way to keep track of your travels. In a way, some of the features are like social media… but for your eyes only.
If you need to keep a food diary or figure out where a smaller piece of your bigger health puzzle fits, Reporter gets you going with the built-in: “How many cups of coffee did you drink today?” Create reports that ask what you’ve eaten if you’re trying to pinpoint an allergy or intolerance, add in calorie-tracking questions if you’re looking to lose weight or compare results like these to see if there’s a pattern that affects your sleep or something else in your day.
Reporter’s final question is more of a thinker. “What did you learn today?” Instead of bringing you back to tense family dinners growing up, allow yourself to nerd out a little and seek out a better answer to that question for next time.
It might just be a fun, nerdy way to catalog life and encourage you to do more or less of certain things, but Reporter could have bigger benefits for you in the long run by giving you a chance to qualify what they quantify. Are you spending too much time with Sandy drinking beer in her kitchen and then sleeping poorly? Maybe it’s time to hang out more with Randy at the library, learning a new language — or with Kandy running before those 12 hours you’re going to spend at work! You be the judge, Reporter is just, well, the reporter.
Does Reporter sound like an app that you would download? Share below!