The section of this blog that gets the most traffic is the Symptom Chart category. People seem to have strong reactions (in a positive way) to the manner in which I try to visually track the ebb and flow my symptoms. I find this highly gratifying as they’re both informative yet fun for me to make. Several people have emailed/told me that they wished they could do something similar to track their symptoms and better convey how they’re feeling to their doctors. This has started me wondering… should try and take the idea to the next level. What do you think?
The manner in which I create and update my charts right now is pretty complex if you’re not a graphic designer. I created a multi-layered and preciously designed template in Adobe Illustrator CS3. Then, each month, I duplicate it and adjust the data I’ve collected for each day. An impossible task for someone who’s not an Illustrator expert, but there’s an easier way. I’m seriously considering building a simple application that I could open, type a few numbers into for the day and submit my daily values. The application would then draw all the bars, dots and other visual elements. If done right, it could actually become fun… or at least less annoying… to keep track of things over time.
The idea came to me after remembering an old application created by the designers at Cuban Council called Moodstats (shown above). Moodstats is a cute little desktop application. Dubbed your "One-Stop Personal Journal Mood Diary Organizer & Recorder" it basically allowed you keep track of your moods over a period of days, weeks and months. These could then be compared to friends and/or the public average. Kind of a social networking tool back before there was Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
Anyway… at the time I thought it was genius and I used it for several months. The novelty wore off after awhile, but I think that since my Lyme doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon that I would continually use something like this. Especially if it utilized some of the newer technologies available today. Maybe there’s an application for my iPhone, or a widget for my Mac. Maybe I could text message my symptoms in while I’m away on vacation. The ideas are pretty limitless.
Of course, once it became simple enough to use, I’d share it with people and offer it up for download. I guess I’m just wondering if people would really, really use it? It’s a lot of effort to go through just for myself, but if others are interested I might consider putting up the effort. If you have any thoughts on this, please comment below or shoot me an email at chronictriathlete (at) gmail.com. Thanks!!
