serial consign

Last week, Kevin Kelly wrote about a web service right on point with some of the recent projects examined here on Serial Consign. Trixie Tracker is a parental database and scheduling application developed by interface designer Ben MacNeill. The service is designed for parents to track the daily rhythms of their infant(s) and over time, build up a body of data pertaining to sleep schedules, diaper changes, breast feeding, milk inventory and diet development. The goal of collecting this information is to provide analytics to make for more efficient parenting (i.e. realizing and capitalizing on the fact that junior is very susceptible to 3 PM naps). Trixie Tracker is a commercial application based off the research, tracking and visualization that MacNeill has been engaged in since the birth of his daughter Trixie four years ago.

The above image is a Sleep Probability Chart which tracks the sleeping patterns of an infant over the course of a day at a resolution of 10 minutes. From top to bottom, the diagrams track the sleep habits of a newborn, a 6 month and year old infant. MacNeill describes the logic of the visualization as follows:

The Sleep Probability chart uses a gray scale to display the probability of your child being asleep at a certain time of day for the selected dates. Areas of high contrast (black and white) mean your child is on a predictable schedule. Areas of low contrast (light, middle and dark gray) mean a less regular schedule. A uniformly gray chart would mean a completely random sleep schedule.

Armed with crystal clear visualizations, which are in turn based on months of observations, parents would most certainly have the means to "optimize" their caregiving. In Kevin Kelly's post on the matter, he identified Trixie Tracker as just one example of a growing movement called Data-Driven Parenting. Dr. Spock please step aside and make way for Mr. Tufte!

[trixie tracker / sleep telemetry chart]

I recommend poking around on the Trixie Tracker site as it is a strange and wonderful experience to see web 2.0 aesthetics applied to parenting. One of MacNeill's most interesting pre-Trixie Tracker projects was his animated feeding chart based off data culled in 2003. MacNeill also took part in a 2006 interview on parentdish in which he contextualizes his views on data and parenting.