New feature: Exclude from stats

“This surely can burn a lot of calories… but is it a sport?”

Every now and then, we run into the discussion, whether something is “too light to be counted as an activity” in HeiaHeia? There’s even been an active debate in the media about this topic, in papers and blogs. Our stand is clear: We’re intentionally a fun and casual service, we believe that all physical activity is good for you. Researchers tend to agree: if you have challenges in moving enough for your health, collecting your daily physical activity dosage from small streams is good way to get started. Everything does count.

To highlight our nature as a fun service, we support some lighter activity types like shopping, clubbing, or sauna. While going to the sauna is good for you, there has been a problem that logging this kind of activities dilutes your training data in HeiaHeia.

Introducing the solution: “Exclude from stats”!

We’ve added a new feature called “Exclude from stats” into HeiaHeia. It’s a tick box in the New entry window. By ticking this box, your entry is shared to your friends according to your settings, and stored in your training log, but it is not included in your activity meter, or any statistics (friends comparison, company statistics, or personal statistics). All activities in the “Lifestyles” category are excluded by default, but you can include them by “un-ticking” the box when making a Lifestyle activity entry.

Example of a fun entry excluded from sports stats:

Here are some practical use cases for the feature:

1. Casual users:

- Entertain your friends: Shopping 3h, “Finally got those running tights!” is a great entry, but maybe not something to include in your stats ; )
- Separate your “diary” from stats: some entries might be important mementos, but do not have much exercise value – just exclude them from stats. Note that you can tick both “Exclude from stats” and “Private” if you want to keep some memories just for yourself!

Example of a “diary entry” – something you don’t want to share or include in sports stats:

2. Hard core users:

- Triathletes: With “Exclude from stats”, you can share a triathlon (or duathlon) entry with your buddies, and put the swimming, running, and cycling parts separately to your stats (tip: mark them “Private”, so you won’t overload your friends with them)
- Full stats for “combination exercises”: If you want to combine many smaller exercises into one, but still keep full stats for all the parts, just do the same as in the triathlon example: share an exercise that is excluded from stats – and mark the smaller exercises “Private” but include them in stats.
- Over 24h exercises: activities exceeding 24 hours are by default excluded from stats (because 99% of these are typos;). If you’ve been sailing for two days, we recommend you to log each day separately.

Example of a >24 hour entry automatically excluded from stats:

We hope you find this feature useful! As always, all feedback is very welcome.