Screenshot: Hi.Q, Inc.
The aim of many wearables is noble. They’re designed to help you get up, get moving, and get healthier. But there’s often a disconnect between users and their goal: While they want to get healthier, they actually don’t know the basic facts about health and fitness that will help them improve their lifestyle.
That’s where iOS quiz app Hi.Q (short for Health IQ) comes in. Hi.Q is comprises over 10,000 questions spanning 300 topics. When you start using the app, you take a 30 question preliminary test covering some broad nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle basics. From there, you can take quizzes on the topic of the day, or dive into more niche subjects like the Paleo diet, heart disease, or running.
With the country’s astronomical obesity epidemic, a growing number of Americans really do want to improve their habits, or are at least aware that they should. (Some evidence: The popularity of health and fitness apps is up 87 percent compared to other app categories.) But it can be hard if they don’t know, or have misconceptions about, how to go about such changes. Hi.Q attempts to give users this in a package that’s less dry than your typical Google Search.
And more accurate. Both the questions and their answers are backed up by health and fitness professionals like Harvard Med School physician Dr. James Colbert and U.S. Olympic Team orthopedic surgeon Dr. Scott Hacker. The answers often link back to specific scientific studies or the articles they are based on so you can easily learn more.
But a quiz app isn’t much fun unless you can show off what you know. When you complete a quiz, you’re given a score on each quiz based on how many questions were answered correctly. High scores earn you status and titles. After achieving “Elite status” on the preliminary quiz, I decided to test my cycling knowledge with a quiz titled “Bicycling: Maximizing Performance,” which earned me another Elite ranking, and an upgrade to “Level 4.” More prolific beta users of the app, listed in the high score tables for each quiz, earn titles like “Health Guru” or “Health Pioneer.” My Level 4 ranking looked pretty measly next to their Level 41’s and 126’s, and I scoped out other quizzes to test my knowledge.
You can also start discussions with other users around these various quiz topics. Combined with the scoring system, Hi.Q CEO and co-founder Munjal Shah has created a rudimentary way of validating user credentials: Yeah, this guy claims he’s an expert on this topic, but is he really? Well, based on his quiz scores, yeah, actually he is. Once you know that, you can engage in discussions with other users and (hopefully) know that the advice they’re sharing isn’t bogus.
While all this can be fun and helpful, the real gain is what you get out of your increased knowledge. By running these questions through a panel of 250,000 people, Shah found that those with a high health IQ score were hospitalized 50 percent less than lose with a low score. So potentially, the more you know (particularly in areas relating to healthy eating habits), the more likely you are to implement those ideas and lead a healthier lifestyle.
Hi.Q is free and currently available from the iOS App Store.
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