Elite HRV: Wellness & Fitness

I went to a scientific conference a few years ago where HRV was discussed. What sold me on it was a study that investigated complications and fatalities among organ donor recipients. Those patients who had the most extreme drops in HRV were, for the most part, the ones who had severe complications. Thus intrigued, I looked for different heart rate monitors and apps and eventually settled on a reasonably priced third party monitor and this app. As someone who analyzes lots of data for a living, I really like what they’ve done with this app. While I’d like to have more visibility on how they arrive at some of their scoring metrics, I do like the simple information you get from the morning analysis dashboard. I have indeed found correlations to changes in my HRV and many different stressors, such as overtraining, a change in diet, and illness. My only wish would be for it to share results with Apple Health. For now, though, I’m happy just manually entering my SDNN each day. Great job, guys!

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I wanted to like version 5. They did add a great breathing pattern section with the ability to tailor the durations, etc. However, they took a step back on so much. Now they don’t bother to show any real-time feedback during alot of the measurement type’s reading periods. Some, like Open Reading, still do, but even there, the HRV (which appears on the top of the graph) does not actually seem to function to make a live graph. That may be fine for athletes, but as a biofeedback device, it misses the point. The old app at least had the post-acquired BPM, R-R Int, and HRV data presented in time-stamped graphs which were actually useful analysis tools. You could see your HRV change over the reading period, allowing you to understand how your breathing rate was controlling your HRV. EliteHRV’s previous version seemed to be more about biofeedback usage than this new version it seems. Why remove them? This new app also is much clunkier to navigate (albeit more aesthetically pleasing I suppose). I just think they took a basically solid app and re-worked it into a weaker version of itself. Also, the new app seems to be written for portrait orientation only. Fine on my iPhone, but now annoying as one of those apps you have to rotate your iPad 90deg to use (if you’re like most people who set them in landscape orientation)

The basic features are there. Specially the app will measure your HRV. Guided breathing is also part of the feature set as is long term monitoring (e.g. hours) support. You can also add meta-data such as notes, tags, energy levels, or glucose levels to an entry. Another great feature is that you can export your data for further analysis with a desktop app. With the exception of long recordings such analysis is probably not necessary because the app gives you all the usual frequency and time domain stats such as SDNN, LF and HF power, and RMSSD. Usability issues include no apparent way to search your entries. For example, I want to only look at the guided breathing entries. Also if you scroll back in time and click on an entry then return to the log view the app takes you back to the top of the list (i.e. today) and you have to scroll again. There are plenty of similar annoyances that I would expect to be missing from an app you pay for, but then this one is free so ... give it a try. It’s probably worth your time. Especially if all your looking for is training guidance.

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I’m very new to this app and probably haven’t discovered all its ins and outs, but I feel that I’m struggling to figure it out. It doesn’t feel that intuitive and I feel that an app like this one should be. To get started the user works from a list, one this user struggled to find. Should the user begin each day with the morning 2 min check? I don’t know, and maybe it says somewhere, but if so, I’m not sure I could find it again. I stumbled on to discovering how to change the breathing balloon’s rate — good and cool once found. I began my meditation this morning with an unfocused gaze on the balloon thinking that the session was being recorded, but my wandering gaze eventually noticed (half way thru) that it wasn’t. A clearer notice like “click to record” might help. Also, locating the balloon at the top of the iPad screen would allow the user to use the balloon visually to pace the breath without watching the numbers. Addition of a simple set of tones would free the user from even having to look at the screen.

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I love the podcast I wish the app was as user friendly and helpful. After 6 months of daily usage not much has changed. The app is mostly just showing you raw data which requires a lot of medical knowledge or a professional to interpret. The simple readiness indicator is the only user-centered UX element but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. All the meaningful insight is trapped in arcane data sets with out any ML interpretation of basic things like telling when a change in HRV averages and coefficients are significant. It’s totally up to you to guess/wonder. The server sometimes goes down which makes the entire app not available, you can’t keep capturing data on your phone to then sync data when the servers are running again. This app needs a lot of user-centered design help, as well as algorithm help to aid in interpretation. I know startup life many times over and wish they can bridge this gap... the infamous crossing the chasm of innovation adoption. I like the lean focus vs other apps like Welltory that are booted with other features and may have dubious HRV interpretation.