With every new year, gyms fill up in January just to slowly return to a normal pace as the year moves into February and March. Jolt.ai, a fitness motivator from the San Diego-based company Rock My World, could keep things interesting on a daily basis.
The program uses Facebook Messenger to have the user interact with the artificial intelligence by logging workouts that the AI responds to with encouragement and humor.
“We want to create something people interact with everyday,” said Adam Riggs-Zeigen, the co-founder and CEO of Rock My World. “That is why we decided to make it conversational as opposed to an app with buttons and menus.”
There is no shortage of fitness tracking products on the market today. Gadgets like Fitbit or phone apps like MyFitnessPal are widespread. The goal of Jolt.ai was to improve the engagement of fitness tracking.
“There are lots of products and services that track behavior, but just recording data and presenting it back to you is not enough to keep people engaged,” Riggs-Zeigen said.
One of the key focuses of Jolt.ai is to keep the user laughing while interacting with the software. For example, if the user says “I played soccer for 30 minutes.” Jolt may respond with “Great work, Messi.”
“Humor is engaging,” Riggs-Zeigen said. “After a workout, you don’t know what you are going to get. It could be a GIF, a high-five or an emoji.”
The challenge facing Jolt.ai is the same one posed to Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home when creating a machine capable of fluid conversation; how does it naturally process language? Humans naturally infer things from a conversation that are not explicitly said, artificial intelligence does not have that ability.
“One of the things we have worked hard on is to give Jolt a big wealth of knowledge,” Riggs-Zeigen said. “Somebody said X but what they really meant was Y. How does the machine determine what that person intended to communicate?”
Right now, it asks the user. Saying “I played basketball for an hour” prompts a response of “Am I correct in saying your activity was ‘basketball’ and you did it for ‘one hour?’” That extra confirmation makes sure the app understands correctly, but it detracts from the conversational nature.
“We are working a lot to understand how people are interacting with the software and how we can reduce the friction in those interactions,” Riggs-Zeigen said.
Once users confirm the actions, they receive feedback and the app uses the data to calculate the MovePoints earned. To understand MovePoints, the user must be familiar with the METS scale for calorie consumption.
“When you tell Jolt ‘I did 30 minutes of kettle bells,’ there is a corresponding METS calorie value,” Riggs-Zeigen explained. “You take that value, divide by your weight and multiply by 10 to get a MovePoint value.”
Those MovePoints are then put on a leaderboard where the user can compare their athletic activity with other users or friends. By making them solely about the activities’ length and intensity, MovePoints provide a fair metric.
“They add a competitive aspect to the app. No matter your age, height, weight or gender, MovePoints allow you to compete on a level playing field,” Riggs-Zeigen said.
Engagement is at the heart of the Jolt software. MovePoints are another way that the company aims to keep people interacting and making the gym more than just an annual destination.
“To accomplish any goal you must state the goal and be held accountable to that goal. That is what Jolt does,” Riggs-Zeigen said. “You state your goal and it is your friendly helper on your shoulder to help you accomplish it.”