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I chime in … the sleep score is worthless. You need to make it optional or you will loose customers. No one sees the score as useful. Did you even run the idea to a focus group?
I treat my sleep as one of the most important aspects of my overall health. So get rid of the SLEEP SCORE as soon as possible. I love my fitbit products but I will switch to another vendor (you know who) if this is not addressed soon.
I'm very much not a fan of the arbitrary sleep score display and think it should be possible to reconfigure the display or opt out as the sleep score feature feels like a judgment and this shouldn't be a pass/fail sort of thing.
However. Sleep score is not a lottery and it is still possible to see the average sleep over the last 7 days quite easily. Sleep score is made up of a combination of your deep sleep, REM, duration and (the key thing that makes people feel the score is random) HR data relative to resting HR. Essentially is your resting HR is 56 and your night's sleep was mostly in the HR range under that, it will give you a better score. Above your resting HR and a worse sleep score.
It's not random. It is not a well though out metric or displayed well. It is an attempt to get more subscribers. But it is NOT random.
Well I don’t know how I can get a good sleep score when I sleep for less than 5 hours...I consider it completely random or based on a very illogical formula.
One solution to get rid of the sleep score is to take away sleep time after sleep (the "pencil" in the uppger right corner) so you have just a couple of hours sleep or less left, save and then change it back to the time you woke up and save again. I have been doing that for months. Then I have average sleep time on the front page, as I wanted.
Sounds ingenious! If I weren't using v 2.78, I'd sure try it.
Cylon.
The stated purpose of the sleep score is to help us get a better quality of sleep. Based on those metrics, how can I improve my non random sleep score?
I would actually turn off the sleep section and manually enter my hours as I have ended up doing that anyway because Fitbit sleep tracking is far from perfect. And I have a pretty good idea when I am in bed so I just would need to track when I woke up manually as well. Of course, I would add the sleep option to my screen later. I find once Fitbit has figured out your typical sleep patterns, I can enter my sleep times manually and it determines the breakdown. I see ppl all the time manually entering their start sleep and end sleep times and wonder what they would really find out if they let Fiit bit start the initial tracking process.
The National Sleep Foundation has a measurement called the Sleep Health Index. It is based off of scientific factors determined by physicians and medical scientists who have performed countless hours of sleep studies to determine a way to rate sleep quality. This effort has been done to assist those who have varying degrees of sleep problems in order to assist patients.
The Sleep Health Index is used for trending and to provide relative feedback. That is, the numbers are aggregated and statistical models are applied to determine how the general population as a whole is sleeping and how are we moving forward with healthy sleep as a society.
Nowhere in the literature have I found a Sleep Index with a value of "Fair" or "Poor" attributed to the index. The value is for interpretation by scientists to help patients find ways for improvement. So for example, if I had an average sleep score of 65 over a 3-month period, and then I added daily 35+ minutes of activity with cardio zone heart rate, and my sleep quality improved to 75 on average over the a 3-month period from onset of daily exercise, it doesn't take being a scientist to surmise that daily exercise helped improve my sleep index.
FitBit has referenced the American Heart Association for heart rate activity feedback as well as measurements of active minutes, even going so far as to qualify that active minutes of less than 10 minutes would not be counted because the AHA states that at least 10 minutes must be completed for a heart benefit to truly be substantial enough to warrant being beneficial.
FitBit, however, has not done the due scientific diligence with using the American Sleep Foundation's Sleep Health Index because they have not used it to properly inform the user with data to which a healthy goal can be created or a useful adjustment can be made. FitBit needs to remove the "Poor", "Fair", "Good" qualifiers as a first level response. Since FitBit has had an update as recently as November 01, 2019, FitBit Can and Should make this update immediately.
Second, FitBit should coordinate with the American Sleep Foundation on how to provide more quality, productive, healthy, and Encouraging feedback to the FitBit community through the app. The American Sleep Foundation would be shocked to find out the mental and emotional discouragement, stress, and anxiety evidenced in this blog, and that users are becoming more unhealthy as a result.
FitBit should coordinate properly. If FitBit cannot, FitBit should do away completely with their version of the sleep score, as it undermines the very work the American Sleep Foundation is trying to achieve.
@SunsetRunner since you don't have a Fitbit that tracks sleep, how can you say you don't like this feature? Matter of fact, you don't even have a Fitbit.
I am very disappointed with this, it’s made my Fitbit worthless and as a product manager myself I don’t believe for a second there is user research supporting this. To be made to raise an improvement suggestion to roll back a bad design choice is frankly an embarrassment to the profession. I am planning on buying a new wearable on Black Friday unless this is resolved it won’t be a Fitbit.
@rich_lau Actually another app...GoogleFit...seems to use the same sleep score as do other apps. I do find it annoying that I can sleep longer and score a 66 and sleep like a zombie with 4 hours or so and my sleep quality is over ten points higher. A case in point...this morning,,, my first sleep was a bit under 4 hours and I had a sleep score of 66. I had another sleep lasting just under 3.25 hours...I had a sleep score of 79. So as many of us here and in our Fitbit groups are questioning...how is this accurate? I know when I sleep well and when I don't...so how is sleep score reinforcing healthy sleep patterns? I have friends getting 66 sleep score for 8 hours or more with over 2 hours REM and an hour of a deep sleep, so how is this encouraging me to get my 7-9 hours that we all need? What other evidence do we need that this sleep score is not helping from a mental health side and is encouraging more people to ignore the need for more sleep while focusing on the all-important sleep score? I would rather get all my sleep in one full sleep but I will take my 7 or more hours any way I can!
Fiddlegrrl- I see you’re switching. I hope you have some success in dealing with yours keep problem... and you get a better feeling of wellbeing without that darn demeaning sleep score.
Sorry Rich_Laue but it is up to Fitbit to prove the validity of their contrived sleep score. Have you not read how the imperfect score is perceived as demeaning and demoralizing by people with genuine and serious sleep issues.
Sleep score is still useless as the default view. When I look at my week's average SLEEP TIME I get valuable data and make adjustments accordingly so am grateful Fitbit still allows that view for me and most users. When I look at the average SLEEP SCORE for the week it means nothing and I usually just laugh at it. It's really that meaningless, useless, and to be honest, worthless. Many others here feel upset/judged by the score and hate having to even see it. That's not me but is obviously the way many here feel about it. I, too, am an all Apple guy but the Apple Watch lost me when it came out without even one day of battery life before needing recharging plus it doesn't even have a hard sleep program built in but need to use another app. Why would I go to not even one full day of battery use with Apple Watch from the 6 days on a charge that I have now with Fitbit, PLUS, all of my sleep data readily and easily still available? Hoping and do believe soon enough Google's takeover will make sleep score at least OPTIONAL.
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