The iPhone is more than just a phone to me. It’s an assistant, a device that I use to keep track of multiple things in my life (money, stats, followers, weight, smoked cigarettes) - each thing with a dedicated application. In the age of database driven applications, this is no doubt the best situation Jeff Raskin could ever imagine: a device that transforms in a new one everytime, according to the application that’s running on it.
But wouldn’t it be great to track all of this data in a single software? You know, at the end of the day they’re just numbers. I’ve slept 5 hours, I’ve spent 10 Euros in beer, I ate 3 eggs two days ago. They’re different situations, but they’re just numbers. And that’s why Sahil Lavingia (developer of Twizzle and Color Stream) started developing Dayta, the already popular One Week App: a single app that could keep track of data, no matter the context. Just data, and days.
And I tell you what, it works.
Dayta is arrogant. But don’t get me wrong, it’s the “right” arrogance, that swagger that a very few apps can show. Think of it as the Liam Gallagher of software. Dayta aims to track every single trackable aspect of your life, and while this could be a very pretentious pitch, what I have here it’s an application that does very well what it was meant for, with a beautiful design and a very affordable price. Back in 1995 Oasis told the world they were about to release the greatest British record of all time; Sahil Lavingia in 2010 wrote he was developing Dayta in just one week. Turns out the Oasis won the Brits with What’s the Story, and Dayta it’s a great app. I’m very glad I gave Sahil the benefit of the doubt, because now I’m here, talking about this great app. Let’s move on from music similarities and rightful arrogance, and let’s see what Dayta actually offers.
Once you fire up Dayta, you’ll be presented with a blank Dashboard screen: here you can add some folders or a new data log. Folders are container of logs, but can’t contain other folders. Data logs are the actual items you want to keep track of. Every folder / log can have a custom icon (you can choose from a nice built-in selection) and you can even specify a unit for each log (£, $, lbs and so on). Let’s add a new log.
The data screen is divided into three main sections: at the top, there are the + and - buttons which you can use to enter the numeric value into the huge square shaped display. Also, you can swipe left to bring up a larger display to enter information manually. Then, there are the data you’ve entered, sorted by day; this section is called “Recent History”. Last, there two bottom horizontal tabs, Visualization and Data Options.
You can edit the data by tapping on the ^ button which opens another screen (Data Points) which lets you either edit units / time or enter a new data point with the + button.
As days go by, you might want to have a visual representation of what you’ve been doing. There it goes the Visualization tab, which displays a graph with all the data points you entered. Tapping on each point opens a popup with the numeric value. You can specify a goal, reset data to zero daily and consolidate them by day. You can also wipe an entire data log or export and email it as raw text + a .csv file.
Dayta is not a financial manager app, nor it’s an organizer of some sort. It keeps track of numbers, and that’s it. Sahil designed a beautiful interface for the app, which mixes elements like wood and leather with standard lists, 16px icons and dark menus. There are some usability issues I wish he’ll fix with future updates (I didn’t notice the left swipe thing at first) and some features I’m really missing (subfolders, different types of graphs, batch delete for data points) but overall Dayta is a very good achievement.
One thing I’d like to state is that Dayta doesn’t have the deepness and attention to details a weight tracking app like Weightbot has, just because Tapbots’ app is exclusively meant for tracking that kind of data. Dayta is a general tracker that only cares about numbers.
I definitely think I’m gonna keep the app on my homescreen and start entering every data I can ever think of. At $0.99, I’d feel guilty otherwise. [iTunes Link]
