          Lauren Wilcox Columbia University New York, NY wilcox@cs.columbia.edu Steven Feiner Columbia University New York, NY feiner@cs.columbia.edu ABSTRACT We propose to evaluate end-user physical activity monitors that can record and display information such as distance, pace and/or cadence information, and physiological infor- mation such as current and average heart rate and calories burned. This evaluation will be conducted to aid us in fram- ing high-level approaches for evaluating physical activity monitoring devices used in research systems and studies. The devices we evaluate need not only comply with stand- ard development technologies employed in research sys- tems (such as web-based programming languages and data acquisition protocols), but must also be usable by study participants who will rely on them to capture activity data in a range of scenarios. Author Keywords Physical activity monitoring, sports watches, personal health monitoring, ubiquitous computing, health and well- ness. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)]: User Interfaces; J.3 [Life and Medical Sciences]: Health General Terms Design; Human Factors; Measurement INTRODUCTION Wearable physical activity tracking technologies have re- cently become more affordable, fashionable (or discrete), and widely available, while their accuracy has improved. This consumer-friendly shift makes use of these devices in personal health research seem promising. However, most of the technical and user experience documentation describing these devices is created for a consumer audience. Many researchers rely on blogs, online enthusiast communities, consumer reviews, and product specifications or marketing materials to gauge the suitability of third-party, off-the- shelf devices for research development and studies. In this proposal, we describe an evaluation of wearable physical activity trackers that addresses criteria and metrics relevant to research system integration and study usage. We hope that conducting and sharing such an evaluation will allow us to work with other workshop participants to arrive at generalizable evaluative approaches and understand im- portant criteria that current resources do not take take into account. TECHNOLOGY SELECTION Garmin GPS-enabled Physical Activity Monitor The Garmin Forerunner® 405 (Figure 1a) is a GPS-enabled physical activity monitor, worn as a sports watch. When activated, it can track a continuous data stream including activity time, distance, pace, calories burned, and heart rate. Additionally, it captures and displays location data includ- ing direction and elevation. Data is uploaded to a user’s personal computer via the ANT+ protocol (an open-license, wireless networking protocol for embedded systems, de- signed for wireless sensor networks). ANT+ preserves de- vice protocols for communicating and preserving data [1]. If set up to sync with a user’s account, client-based soft- ware by Garmin, installed on the user’s personal computer, will automatically update activity information for the user on a cloud server (hosted by Garmin). In addition, Garmin makes a developer API available, which can be used to fa- cilitate communication with the Garmin client-based soft- ware (the “Communicator Plugin”). These APIs can be used, along with a Javascript API, under the Apache Open- Source License, Version 2.0 [8]. Figure 1. (a) The Garmin Forerun- ner® 405 displays data associated with an activity, such as the length of participation in the activity (mid- dle left of display) and the calories burned (bottom right of display). (b). Two views of the Fitbit Ultra activity tracker. (Left) A flower provides an abstract view of activity level. (Right) Total distance for an activity is shown. Submitted to Ubicomp 2012 Workshop on Evaluating Off- the-Shelf Technologies for Personal Health Monitoring