On a bus ride home to Ottawa earlier this year, Ryan Groome spent the whole time shifting in his seat, unable to find a comfortable position. It was then that he realized the seat wasn’t the problem, he was. After moving to Ottawa five years ago, Groome, an experimental physicist, got wrapped up in his […]
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On a bus ride home to Ottawa earlier this year, Ryan Groome spent the whole time shifting in his seat, unable to find a comfortable position. It was then that he realized the seat wasn’t the problem, he was.
After moving to Ottawa five years ago, Groome, an experimental physicist, got wrapped up in his work. Focused on his job, he told OBJ he gradually lost sight of his weight and health.
After the bus journey this past March, he bought his first scale and realized he’d gained 70 pounds. He decided that it was time for a change, and so, while his wife, Eveline, travelled to Brazil for three months, he got serious about his health, using apps to help him out.
“I looked up my (body mass index) and, obviously, I was not happy, but it was informative. I started logging my weight. I started with a lot of other apps, but none were really the right fit for me,” he recounted, adding that he put in weeks of effort without seeing results and, without a clear picture of what his weight loss journey would look like, he quit trying.
Frustrated, he decided to use his background in science and coding and his wife’s knowledge of health sciences and kinesiology to build an app that would track users' weight and give accurate estimates of when they could reach their goals.
“I decided to write some Python code and plot it out myself. I just obsessed over it for a few weeks, but it really became a useful tool. It was helping set weekly goals and helping me understand a bit more about my weight. Eventually we decided this could be a tool that could be useful for other people,” he said.
This month, Steady Scale launched on Apple’s App Store. Users select what they want the app to track: weight loss, weight gain or weight maintenance. Then they set a goal and the app uses the input data to calculate an estimate of when they’ll reach it.
Groome said Steady Scale is different from other weight management apps since it removes the “gamification” features and communicates in neutral language.
“There’s no engagement mechanics at all. We had notifications built into the app at one point, but it was through a lot of long discussions that we decided on the tone and philosophy that we wanted to communicate to someone on their (health) journey. There are no badges, no streaks and body language is neutral throughout the app. A lot of it is to inform in an objective and neutral way, while also communicating the current limitations of analysis that comes out,” Groome said.
With weight often being a delicate subject, Groome said he and Eveline wanted to ensure that people would use the app in a healthy way.
“One of the design philosophies was ‘guardrails, not gates’ … We put a lot of effort into making sure that the user is in control at every step and makes the decision that is right for them,” he said.
Steady Scale generates revenue on a subscription model, with monthly subscriptions costing US$1.99 and yearly subscriptions costing US$14.99.
Since he built Steady Scale for his own use, Groome said he never thought of profiting off the project. “If we ever do (make a profit) that would be really incredible. It may sound really cliché, but we just wanted the tool to exist so we built it.”
To continue building the business, Groome said he’s reached out to the Ignition program at Invest Ottawa for mentorship. Next steps for the app include building in more features, such as making it available in multiple languages and having more educational resources for users.
“Eveline is from Brazil and many of our friends don’t speak English, so we would like to translate the app into Brazilian Portuguese, but also other languages like French and Spanish,” Groome said.
“We would like to build some very good partnerships and collaborations, not only with these professionals that use Steady Scale, but with researchers. We built this app with a scientific mind and it would be great to partner with researchers studying weight management.”
With 40 current users, the couple hopes to reach 1,000 by October.
Steady Scale is bootstrapped, but Eveline said they may seek external funding.
“We would love to reach out to the local community but, at this point, we’re not looking for funding. This was such an amazing project to work on together. We really wanted to see what we can do to help people and see where it goes. And if it grows, maybe we’ll get to the point where we’re going to need funding,” she said.
While Steady Scale is a husband-and-wife operation, if it sees success in the coming months, Eveline said they hope to invest in marketing and outreach.
“We would definitely want to bring in more people, but as of now we’re able to manage. Hopefully that’s a problem that we want to have in the future.”
