Find out more about Sports Tracker in this exclusive interview with Yka Huhtala and Jussi Kaasinen, the dynamic duo behind the application.

Talk about the paths that brought you to Nokia.

Yka: My educational background is from the University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, where I did some research on data mining, database analysis and distributed systems.

Jussi: My background is in electronics, hardware development and so on. Since graduating from Helsinki University of Technology, I have done a whole bunch of applied electronics-related stuff, working with sensors, sensor-side development, etc. Then I came to Nokia to do research in the area of sensors and how they could be used in the mobile world to gather more information from the environment and the user, collecting all types of unseen information and providing it to the end user.

Yka: Yes. And as I came from the software side, and Jussi from the hardware side knowing everything about related sensors, the combination was great. And it is what brought us together.

So Sports Tracker really came from a bottom-up approach.

Yka: Yes, from the beginning it has been a bottom-up approach without too much strict guidance.

Jussi: Yka has this good slogan, “Cut the crap and code.” While other people are just saying, “We could do this, we could do that, we could analyze this,” and so on, Yka has just implemented everything to make things work for real. You have to have early results and start testing things, not just plan everything to death. We’ve gotten such great feedback because there’s a real and clear end-user need, and we have an enthusiastic developer team that’s pushing ideas forward.

When was Sports Tracker first developed?

Yka: The official version was launched on March 2007.

Jussi: That was the first launch to the public; we’d been testing it for quite some time within the company before that. Finally, we put the application out for free download, the message started spreading and the rest is history.

When did you first see it used for more than just sports purposes?

Yka: Internally, when we put it to internal alpha testing, people started using it to do all kinds of things, and not just sports.

Jussi: People are brilliant. They are very intelligent and they can invent all kinds of use cases for this, goofing around and doing all kinds of fun stuff.

Yka: I think misusing applications is the best way to find other exciting possibilities out of them.

Jussi: Yes, when people found different ways to use Sports Tracker, there was a queue behind Yka’s door, saying, “Hey, I’d like to implement this and that.” Then a few minutes later there was a new version. We were constantly getting feedback, constantly improving, then taking all these brilliant ideas into account and releasing new versions with new features.

It was a beautiful process, seeing people becoming kids again, coming into a big meeting after a long weekend and seeing the bosses comparing numbers and graphs about riding their Harley-Davidsons, or skiing in the French Alps. It showed how Sports Tracker could capture those moments, those memories, and then you could share those memories with others.

Talk about how Sports Tracker changed after March, once it was out in the public.

Jussi: There was a huge buzz in all kinds of blogs, and we started getting great feedback from all sorts of users and early adopters.

Yka: We started to implement different improvement ideas and so on. We put out quite a lot of updates including various features between March and December, somewhere around ten.

Jussi: And many internal updates in between. We spent a lot of time studying user feedback, analyzing and implementing improvements that people are suggesting. It’s great, because once the next version is out, people notice, “Okay, my suggestion was implemented here.” We’re getting so many emails that are like, “Thanks a lot, guys, this is just unbelievable.”

Yka: I have to say that we’re very sorry that we haven’t been able to answer all the feedback emails. We have done our best, but they’ve become way too much for a two-person core team. And thanks for excellent feedback and improvement ideas, those keep our developing work rolling in the right direction.

How does it feel to see Sports Tracker living in all these new places - blogs, Facebook and so on?

Yka: We want to try all kinds of things, like this Facebook application. It started as an exercise to see how we can integrate different services and social channels.

Jussi: We have our focus in sports, but we are excited, because people are very clever, they can use this in all sorts of ways. Our effort is still going into sports features, that’s the redline we are following. But we have a lot of people saying, “Hey, I’m not a sporty person but I’m doing odd and weird with this application to track my whereabouts.” But we also have people writing in from all kinds of sports - motorsports, paragliding, surfing - people who are really in extreme environments.

Yka: After getting feedback from various sources using the application for different kind of activities, we decided to choose our first User of the Month.

Jussi: Yes, when we see something really cool, we have every now and then nominated a user of the month, who has then written a short story about what he or she has been doing with Sports Tracker. The first User of the Month was Vegas the Dog. You have to go see the article for yourself.

Now you have added the online service and the ability to geolocate your photos along the track. How did that come about?

Yka: Someone suggested, why don’t you add this, because you’re already recording location points? This feature had been in our list of things to explore for quite a long time, so we decided to implement it and see what the outcome was. And I think the result is pretty neat.

Jussi: At the same time, campaign activities were coming up, the number of users was increasing, traffic was increasing. There was a growing user community, questions were coming in, asking how do we share this stuff, how do we connect to other users and see what other users are doing? So we started implementing the web service for easy sharing of activities. People really liked it inside Nokia, so we went public with this functionality.

Yka: Now that we have a chance, we have to thank our wonderful colleagues who are responsible for server hosting at Nokia. Without their help and expertise we would have not been able to keep up the good speed. Thanks, guys!

With the new widgets that let you show your tracks on your blog and social networks, how do you see that changing the way people use Sports Tracker?

Yka: I think in the longer term, it will be more about sharing and building small communities. Now you can see what other people are doing without having to share in person. It’s exciting and everybody can see that the possibilities are endless.

Where can people go to give you more feedback, and what are some good resources for Sports Tracker users?

Jussi: I think sportstracker.nokia.com is the place to go for the latest information; we’re constantly improving that site. This project was run in the Wellness & Healthcare group in the Smart Spaces laboratory at Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland. Our official project page at NRC is another place to go to see what is happening.

Anything else you’d like to say to the Sports Tracker audience?

Jussi: We have to say, thanks for the brilliant, truly wonderful, great feedback. The feedback has been awesome, and Sports Tracker has evolved thanks to this feedback that’s guiding us, people requesting functions. We are really listening to what our users want to have. Right from day one, the end user has been our main focus.

One other thing we’d like to say is that the project has been successful because we’ve been able to implement all kinds of stuff really fast with low risk - before anyone has been able to say, “No, don’t continue that.” That’s been the secret: really believing in what we’re doing, really believing that this would be great and then just doing it - always with great passion. Once the user feedback started coming in, looking back on all the long days and long nights, we really think it was worth it.

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