Self tracking and digital health

Self
Tracking
and
Digital
Health

John
Rooksby

john.rooksby@glasgow.ac.uk

In
this
lecture

•  Self
tracking

– examples

•  A
brief
history
of
self
tracking

•  Self
tracking
and

– Mobile
health

– Health
behaviour
change

•  HCI
research
on
self
tracking

Tracking
Physical
AcGvity

Tracking
light
acGvity

•  Pedometers

Tracking
exercise

•  Run
trackers

•  Cycling
trackers

•  Swimming
trackers

Tracking
(non)
sedentary
Gme

•  Standing
Gme

Tracking
Weight
and
Diet

Food
tracking

•  Calorie
counGng

•  NutriGon
apps

Weight
tracking

Tracking
Mental
Wellbeing

Tracking
mood,
stress
and
anxiety

Symptom
tracking
to
understand
and

manage
disorders

•  Post
traumaGc
stress
disorder

•  Bi-‐polar
disorder

Tracking
Health
CondiGons

Managing
chronic
condiGons
such
as

Diabetes,
Asthma,
and
Chronic
pain

MedicaGon
tracking

•  Compliance

•  Keeping
records

Much,
much
more

•  Sleep

•  FerGlity

•  Periods

•  Bad
habits

–  e.g.
smoking
cessaGon,
snacking

•  Achievements

–  e.g.
books
read,
places
visited

•  Much,
much
more

Self
tracking
technology

Self
tracking
can
be
done
with
a
range
of

technologies

•  Mobile
apps

•  Web
apps

•  Wearables

•  Smart
devices

New
technology
is
not
essenGal,
it
is

usually
just
more
convenient
than

mechanical
technology
and
pen
+
paper.

Self
tracking
is
not
new

1960s
The
"manpo-‐kei"
or

"manpo-‐meter"

The
ﬁrst:

•  To
count
steps
rather

than
distance

•  To
be
marketed
on

health
grounds

•  Origin
of
10,000
steps

Today,
step
counGng
is
very

common

Self
tracking
is
not
new

Scales

•  Doctors
scales
ﬁrst
produced
in

1865.

•  Public
"penny
scales"
in
1885.

–  By
1937
the
US
Department
of

commerce
reported
130,000,000

people
using
public
scales.

•  Household
scale
in
mid
20th
C.

Today
weight
is
a
common
health

measure.

Self
tracking
is
not
new

So
what
is
new?

•  Ubiquity
of
smartphones
and
devices

•  New
forms
of
sensor
(e.g.
locaGon
tracking),
mulGple
sensors

•  Increasing
computaGonal
power
(e.g.
enabling
acGvity

recogniGon)

•  Detailed
visual
and
hapGc
feedback

•  ConnecGvity

–  IntegraGon
of
data
between
applicaGons

–  Sharing
of
data
with
peers

–  Sharing
data
with
health
providers

Self
tracking
and
digital
health

Self
tracking

Digital
health

Digital
health

Self
tracking
is
related
to
several
areas
of
digital
health,

including:

•  Mobile
health
-‐
Using
mobile
devices
to
collect,
analyse
and
communicate

informaGon

•  Health
Behaviour
change
-‐
Encouraging
people
to
make
posiGve
changes

in
order
to
reduce
their
risks
of
developing
preventable
diseases

Mobile
Health

Olla
and
Shimskey's

Taxonomy
of
mHealth

applicaGons
for

smartphones

Mobile
Health

Olla
and
Shimskey's

Taxonomy
of
mHealth

applicaGons
for

smartphones

More
to
the
area
than

tracking

•  DiagnoGcs

•  EducaGon
and

reference

•  Eﬃciency

•  Environmental

monitoring

Health
behaviour
change

Many
people
can
become
more
healthy
and
reduce
the
risk
of

developing
many
illnesses
and
dying
early,
by
changing
their

behaviours:

•  Standing
more,
walking
more,
taking
more
exercise

•  Quifng
smoking

•  Healthy
eaGng

Self
tracking
is
of
importance
in
health-‐behaviour
change.

•  To
change
a
behaviour
it
is
important
to
measure
it

Health
behaviour
change

However

•  Not
all
self
tracking
is
for
the
purpose
of
changing
behaviour.

•  Behaviour
change
is
a
long
term
process,
because
it
requires

maintenance
to
be
eﬀecGve.

–  Aher
one
year
of
absGnence
47%
of
smokers
will
relapse,
aher
5
years

it
is
7%.

–  Trackers
are
ohen
used
for
shorter
periods,
just
a
few
weeks
or

months
before
moving
to
something
else.

–  Trackers
can
act
as
'extrinsic'
moGvators,
but
change
is
easier
to

maintain
when
people
become
'intrinsically'
moGvated.

HCI

Self
tracking
and
digital
health
are
large,
interdisciplinary
areas

So
what
is
the
role
of
HCI?

HCI

Self
tracking
and
digital
health
are
large,
interdisciplinary
areas

So
what
is
the
role
of
HCI?

HCI
papers
ohen
focus
on:

1.  InnovaGng
new
systems
and
applicaGons

2.  Improving/exploring
interface
and
interacGon
design

3.  Understanding
real-‐world
user
pracGces

4.  Taking
criGcal
perspecGves

Activity Sensing in the Wild: A Field Trial of UbiFit Garden
Sunny Consolvo1, 2
, David W. McDonald2
, Tammy Toscos1
, Mike Y. Chen1
, Jon Froehlich3
,
Beverly Harrison1
, Predrag Klasnja1, 2
, Anthony LaMarca1
, Louis LeGrand1
, Ryan Libby3
,
Ian Smith1
, & James A. Landay1, 3
1
Intel Research Seattle
Seattle, WA 98105 USA
[sunny.consolvo, beverly.harrison,
anthony.lamarca, louis.l.legrand]
@intel.com, ttoscos@indiana.edu,
mike@ludic-labs.com,
iansmith@acm.org
2
The Information School
DUB Group
University of Washington
[consolvo, dwmc, klasnja]
@u.washington.edu
3
Computer Science & Engineering
DUB Group
[landay, jfroehli, libby]
@cs.washington.edu
ABSTRACT
Recent advances in small inexpensive sensors, low-power
processing, and activity modeling have enabled applications
that use on-body sensing and machine learning to infer
people’s activities throughout everyday life. To address the
growing rate of sedentary lifestyles, we have developed a
system, UbiFit Garden, which uses these technologies and a
personal, mobile display to encourage physical activity. We
conducted a 3-week field trial in which 12 participants used
the system and report findings focusing on their experiences
with the sensing and activity inference. We discuss key
implications for systems that use on-body sensing and
activity inference to encourage physical activity.
Author Keywords
persuasive technology, sensing, activity inference, mobile
phone, ambient display, fitness, activity-based applications.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.2 User Interfaces, H.5.m Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
Recent advances in small inexpensive sensors, low-power
processing, and activity modeling have enabled new classes
of technologies that use on-body sensing and machine
learning to automatically infer people’s activities
throughout the day. These emerging technologies have seen
success with participants in controlled and “living” lab
settings [11] and with researchers in situ [18]. The next step
is to conduct in situ studies with the target user population.
Such studies expose important issues, for example, how the
systems are used as part of everyday experiences, where the
technology is brittle, and user reactions to activity inference
and the presentation of those inferences.
One application domain for on-body sensing and activity
inference is addressing the growing rate of sedentary
lifestyles. Regular physical activity is critical to everyone’s
physical and psychological health, regardless of their being
normal weight, overweight, or obese [6,16]. Physical activity
reduces risk of premature mortality, coronary heart disease,
type II diabetes, colon cancer, and osteoporosis, and has also
been shown to improve symptoms associated with mental
health conditions such as depression and anxiety. Yet despite
the importance of physical activity, many adults in the U.S.
do not get enough exercise [1].
Technologies that apply on-body sensing and activity
inference to the fitness domain are faced with a challenge
regarding which physical activities should be detected. The
American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends
that physical activity be regular and include
cardiorespiratory training (or “cardio”) where large muscle
groups are involved in dynamic activity such as running or
cycling; resistance training, that is weight training that builds
muscular strength and endurance; and flexibility training
where muscles are slowly elongated to improve or maintain
range of motion [22]. Technologies that attempt to encourage
physical activity should support the range of activities that
contribute to a physically active lifestyle, rather than focus on
a single activity such as walking.
Our goal in this work is to investigate users’ experiences with
a system that we have developed, UbiFit Garden, which uses
on-body sensing, activity inference, and a novel personal,
mobile display to encourage physical activity. While our
future work will focus on how the system affects awareness
and sustained behavior change, at this stage, we are exploring
how the system affects individuals’ everyday lives, how they
interpret and reflect on the data about their physical activities,
and how they interact with that data. We conducted a three-
week field trial (n=12) with participants who were
representative of UbiFit Garden’s target audience. In this
paper, we discuss the types of physical activities participants
performed, how those activities were recorded and
manipulated, and participants’ qualitative reactions to activity
inference and manual journaling. We also discuss
participants’ general reactions to the system.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise,
or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
specific permission and/or a fee.
CHI 2008, April 5–10, 2008, Florence, Italy.
Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-60558-011-1/08/04…$5.00.
AcGvity
sensing
in
the
wild:
A
ﬁeld

trial
of
UbiFit
Garden

Sunny
Consolvo
et
al
(CHI2008)

This
paper

•  Describes
a
novel
(in
2008)
mobile

acGvity
tracking
system

•  Presents
results
from
a
ﬁeld
trial

of
the
system

•  Discusses
the
use
of
acGvity

trackers
for
encouraging
physical

acGvity

InnovaGon

Jogging with a Quadcopter
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, Matthew Muirhead
Exertion Games Lab
RMIT University
Melbourne, Australia
{floyd, matt}@exertiongameslab.org
ABSTRACT
Jogging is a popular exertion activity. The abundance of
jogging apps suggests to us that joggers can appreciate the
opportunity for technology to support the jogging
experience. We want to take this investigation a step further
by exploring if, and how, robotic systems can support the
jogging experience. We designed and built a flying robotic
system, a quadcopter, as a jogging companion and studied
its use with 13 individual joggers. By analyzing their
experiences, we derived three design dimensions that
describe a design space for flying robotic jogging
companions: Perceived Control, Focus and Bodily
Interaction. Additionally, we articulate a series of design
tactics, described by these dimensions, to guide the design
of future systems. With this work we hope to inspire and
guide designers interested in creating robotic systems to
support exertion experiences.
Author Keywords
Jogging; running; movement-based play; whole-body
interaction; sports; quadcopter; robot; exertion
H.5.2. [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User
Interfaces - Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
Understanding the role of interactive technology to support
physical exertion is a thriving field in HCI. By exertion
interactions we mean interactions with technology that
require intense physical effort from the user [20].
Supporting exertion is important, as exertion activity can
facilitate social, mental and physical health benefits.
One popular exertion activity is jogging, i.e. running at a
leisurely pace. The abundance of jogging apps, sports
watches and wearable sensors (for example embedded in
Figure 1. What is it like to jog with a quadcopter?
shirts and socks [3]) suggests to us that joggers appreciate
the opportunity for technology to support their jogging
experience. This trend has been recognized and investigated
by research [39] while special interest groups (SIGs) at CHI
have also been formed to encourage further developments
in this area [23, 24].
We believe that the current range of systems to support
jogging is only the beginning of a trend. With sensor
advancements, improvement in battery performance and
miniaturization, more opportunities will emerge for
designers to support people’s exertion experiences. Along
with technology advancements, there have also been
advances in our understanding of the role of bodily aspects
from a system’s design perspective, most often under the
name of embodiment [10, 36]. We take this investigation a
step further and wonder if exertion activities like jogging
that are so embodiment-focused might benefit from designs
with a similar embodiment focus. We see robots as having
the potential for such an embodiment focus, and therefore
begin by exploring if, and how, robotic systems can support
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for
profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the
first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must
be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on
servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request
permissions from permissions@acm.org.
CHI 2015, April 18 - 23 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM 978-1-4503-3145-6/15/04…$15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702472
Jogging
with
a
quadcopter

Florian
'Floyd'
Mueller
et
al
(CHI2015)

This
paper:

•  Explores
if
and
how
roboGc

systems
can
support
the
jogging

experience

•  Presents
a
roboGc
quadcopter

based
system
for
joggers

•  Uses
of
robots
include
keeping

pace,
sefng
routes,
making
a

distracGon,
and
making
jogging

playful

InnovaGon

TastyBeats:
Designing Palatable Representations of Physical Activity
Rohit Ashok Khot1
, Jeewon Lee1
, Deepti Aggarwal2
, Larissa Hjorth3
, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller1
1
Exertion Games Lab
RMIT University, Australia
{ rohit, jeewon, floyd }@
exertiongameslab.org
2
Microsoft Centre for Social NUI,
University of Melbourne, Australia
daggarwal@student.unimelb.edu.au
3
RMIT University,
Australia
larissa.hjorth@rmit.edu.au
Figure 1: TastyBeats is a fountain-based interactive system that creates a fluidic spectacle of
mixing sport drinks based on heart rate data of physical activity.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we introduce palatable representations that
besides improving the understanding of physical activity
through abstract visualization also provide an appetizing
drink to celebrate the experience of being physically active.
By designing such palatable representations, our aim is to
offer novel opportunities for reflection on one’s physical
activities. We present TastyBeats, a fountain-based
interactive system that creates a fluidic spectacle of mixing
sport drinks based on heart rate data of physical activity,
which the user can later consume to replenish the loss of
body fluids due to the physical activity. We articulate our
experiences in designing the system as well as learning
gained through field deployments of the system in
participants’ homes for a period of two weeks. We found
that our system increased participants’ awareness of
physical activity and facilitated a shared social experience,
while the prepared drink was treated as a hedonic reward
that motivated participants to exercise more. Ultimately,
with this work, we aim to inspire and guide design thinking
on palatable representations, which we believe opens up
new interaction possibilities to support physical activity
experience.
Author Keywords
Palatable representation; fluidic interfaces; physical
activity; quantified self; personal informatics; Human-Food
Interaction (HFI).
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
Activity trackers like pedometers and heart rate monitors
are becoming increasingly popular to support physical
activity experiences [41]. These devices collect personally
relevant data such as bodily responses to physical activity
and provide opportunities to reflect on the collected data
through self-monitoring [22]. For example, pedometers
count the number of steps taken in a day, while heart rate
monitors inform about exercise intensity. Research suggests
that regular use of these devices can increase user
motivation for physical activity [35, 43].
One key aspect of tracking physical activity is visualization,
which improves understanding of the data [22, 35].
“Seeing” makes knowledge credible [4] and “greater
visibility of information puts an added responsibility to act
on” as pointed out by Viseu and Suchman [45]. For
example, by visualizing physical activity data, users can
gain a better understanding of their physical activity levels
and can make this gained knowledge actionable towards
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission
and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org.
CHI 2015, April 18 - 23 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to
ACM.
ACM 978-1-4503-3145-6/15/04...$15.00.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702197
TastyBeats:
Designing
palatable

representaGons
of
physical
acGvity

Rohit
Ashok
Khot
et
al
(CHI
2015)

This
paper

•  Introduces
'palatable'

representaGons
of
data
as
an

alternaGve
to
visualisaGon

•  Presents
a
fountain
based
system

that
creates
a
'ﬂuidic
spectacle'
of

mixing
sports
drinks
based
on

heart
rate
data

•  Presents
a
ﬁeld
study
of
the

system
in
three
households

InnovaGon

Design Requirements for Technologies that
Encourage Physical Activity
Sunny Consolvo1, 2
, Katherine Everitt3
, Ian Smith1
, & James A. Landay1, 3
1
Intel Research Seattle
1100 NE 45th
Street, 6th
Floor
[sunny.consolvo,ian.e.smith,
james.a.landay]@intel.com
2
The Information School
Box 352840
Seattle, WA 98195-2840 USA
consolvo@u.washington.edu
3
Box 352350
Seattle, WA 98195-2350 USA
[everitt,landay]@cs.washington.edu
ABSTRACT
Overweight and obesity are a global epidemic, with over
one billion overweight adults worldwide (300+ million of
whom are obese). Obesity is linked to several serious health
problems and medical conditions. Medical experts agree
that physical activity is critical to maintaining fitness,
reducing weight, and improving health, yet many people
have difficulty increasing and maintaining physical activity
in everyday life. Clinical studies have shown that health
benefits can occur from simply increasing the number of
steps one takes each day and that social support can
motivate people to stay active. In this paper, we describe
Houston, a prototype mobile phone application for
encouraging activity by sharing step count with friends. We
also present four design requirements for technologies that
encourage physical activity that we derived from a three-
week long in situ pilot study that was conducted with
women who wanted to increase their physical activity.
Author Keywords
design requirements, fitness, physical activity, pedometer,
mobile phone, obesity, overweight, social support.
H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: User-centered design; H.5.3 [Group
and Organization Interfaces]: Evaluation/methodology,
Asynchronous interaction.
INTRODUCTION
To help address the global epidemic of overweight and
obesity, we are investigating how technology could help
encourage people to sustain an increased level of physical
activity, which medical experts agree is critical to
maintaining fitness, reducing weight, and improving health.
We are specifically interested in encouraging opportunistic
physical activities. These are where a person incorporates
activities into her normal, everyday life to increase her
overall level of physical activity (e.g., walking instead of
driving to work, taking the stairs, or parking further away
from her destination). We are also interested in encouraging
structured exercise, where a person elevates her heart rate
for an extended period (e.g., going for a run or swim).
In our first investigation, we focus on encouraging people
to add opportunistic physical activities to their lives,
without discouraging structured exercise. Studies have
shown that people can achieve health benefits by merely
increasing the number of steps they take each day and that
support from friends and family has consistently been
related to an increase in physical activity [3, 4, 17, 19].
However, with today’s hectic lifestyles, many people have
difficulty fitting exercise into their lives and spending
quality time with their friends. A mobile device such as a
mobile phone can provide relevant information at the right
time and place, and may help encourage opportunistic
activities [6]. Based on these findings, we investigate if
technology could encourage physical activity by providing
personal awareness of activity level and mediating physical
activity-related social interaction among friends.
We use daily step count as a measure of physical activity
and a mobile phone-based fitness journal we developed to
track and share progress toward a daily step count goal
within a small group of friends. We realize that
investigating the effect of the technology on sustained
behavior change will require a longitudinal study and thus
have taken a user-centered design approach starting with a
three-week long in situ pilot study. We evaluated an early-
stage prototype of the mobile phone application with three
groups of women who wanted to increase their levels of
physical activity, were interested in preventing weight gain,
and in many cases, had a goal of losing some weight. The
results of the pilot study are being used to inform the design
of a new application we are building to enable a
longitudinal study to examine effects on behavior.
In this paper, we focus our discussion on the four key
design requirements for technologies that encourage
physical activity that we derived from our analysis of the
CHI 2006, April 22–27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Copyright 2006 ACM 1-59593-178-3/06/0004...$5.00.
CHI 2006 Proceedings • Designing for Tangible Interactions April 22-27, 2006 • Montréal, Québec, Canada
457
Design
requirements
for
technologies

that
encourage
physical
acGvity

Sunny
Consolvo
et
al
(CHI2006)

This
paper

•  Presents
a
system
for
entering

pedometer
data
onto
mobile

phones

•  Presents
a
ﬁeld
trial
of
the
system

with
a
social
group

•  Discuses
issues
in
presenGng
and

sharing
acGvity
data
using
mobile

phones

InteracGon
design

Balancing Accuracy and Fun: Designing Camera Based
Mobile Games for Implicit Heart Rate Monitoring
Teng Han2
, Xiang Xiao1
, Lanfei Shi2
, John Canny3
, Jingtao Wang1
1
Department of Computer Science,
2
Intelligent Systems Program,
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
{teh24@, xiangxiao@cs., las231@, jingtaow@cs.}pitt.edu
3
Computer Science Division,
University of California at Berkeley,
387 Soda Hall, Berkeley, CA, USA
jfc@cs.berkeley.edu
ABSTRACT
Heart rate monitoring is widely used in clinical care, fitness
training, and stress management. However, tracking
individuals' heart rates faces two major challenges, namely
equipment availability and user motivation. In this paper,
we present a novel technique, LivePulse Games (LPG), to
measure users’ heart rates in real time by having them play
games on unmodified mobile phones. With LPG, the heart
rate is calculated by detecting changes in transparency of
users’ fingertips via the built-in camera of a mobile device.
More importantly, LPG integrate users’ camera lens
covering actions as an essential control mechanism in game
play, and detect heart rates implicitly from intermittent lens
covering actions. We explore the design space and trade-
offs of LPG through three rounds of iterative design. In a
12-subject user study, we found that LPG are fun to play
and can measure heart rates accurately. We also report the
insights for balancing measurement speed, accuracy, and
entertainment value in LPG.
Author Keywords
Heart rate, mobile phone, multi-modal interface, game
design, serious game, ECG, quantified self.
H5.2. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
User Interfaces.
General Terms
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors.
INTRODUCTION
Heart rate is one important vital sign in health care [6, 29].
For healthy people, resting heart rate (RHR) is also an
essential physiological marker of physical fitness [7, 30,
38], and expected life span [13]. Heart rate has been used in
fitness training [19, 20] and competitive sports for
managing work-out intensity and balancing physical
exertion. Both continual readings of heart rates [5, 15, 37,
33] and heart rate variability, a.k.a. HRV [27, 29, 32, 33],
can predict a user’s physiological state, including cognitive
workload and mental stress levels, in contexts such as
computer user interfaces [29, 33], traffic control [29],
longitudinal monitoring of emotion and food intake [5], and
intelligent tutoring [15]. Therefore, the efficient
measurement of heart rate can be of great significance
across scenarios involving physical health, mental activities
or a combination of both.
Unfortunately, most heart rate measurement methods are
either time-consuming1
, or require special measurement
equipment [25] that may not be available to a wide
audience. For example, manual pulse counting with fingers
may be tedious, and inaccurate. More precise methods
include the Electrocardiograph (ECG) [22, 25] and pulse
oximeters [25, 35]. These dedicated heart rate monitoring
devices share at least three disadvantages. First, the costs of
these devices could prevent wide adoption in everyday life.
Second, it is not convenient to carry and use the devices “on
the go”. Last but not least, existing methods provide little
immediate benefits or intrinsic motivation to users and thus
may be tedious to track heart rate in a longitudinal setting.
Figure 1. Real-time heart rate measurement via LivePulse
Games (left: City Defender, right: Gold Miner).
To overcome the limitations of existing techniques, we
have developed LivePulse Games (LPG, figure 1) to
measure users’ heart rates in real time by having them play
serious games on unmodified mobile phones. LPG calculate
heart rates by detecting the transparency change of
fingertips via the built-in camera (i.e. commodity camera
1
In both the preparation phase and the actual measurement stage.
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
Permissions@acm.org.
CHI 2015, April 18 - 23 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Copyright 2015 ACM 978-1-4503-3145-6/15/04…$15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702502
Health Sensors & Monitoring CHI 2015, Crossings, Seoul, Korea
847
Balancing
accuracy
and
fun:
Designing

Camera
Based
Mobile
Games
for

Implicit
Heart
Rate
Monitoring

Teng
Han
et
al
(CHI
2015)

This
paper

•  Presents
"live
pulse
games"
for

smartphones
which
measure

pulse
during
play

•  The
smartphone
camera
is
used
as

controller
and
sensor
for
pulse.

•  This
allows
for
longitudinal

collecGon
of
heart
rate
data

InteracGon
design

Pass the Ball: Enforced Turn-Taking in Activity Tracking
John Rooksby, Mattias Rost, Alistair Morrison, Matthew Chalmers
School of Computing Science,
University of Glasgow, UK.
{firstname.lastname}@glasgow.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
We have developed a mobile application called Pass The
Ball that enables users to track, reflect on, and discuss
physical activity with others. We followed an iterative
design process, trialling a first version of the app with 20
people and a second version with 31. The trials were
conducted in the wild, on users’ own devices. The second
version of the app enforced a turn-taking system that meant
only one member of a group of users could track their
activity at any one time. This constrained tracking at the
individual level, but more successfully led users to
communicate and interact with each other. We discuss the
second trial with reference to two concepts: social-
relatedness and individual-competence. We discuss six key
lessons from the trial, and identify two high-level design
implications: attend to “practices” of tracking; and look
within and beyond “collaboration” and “competition” in the
design of activity trackers.
Author Keywords:
Activity Tracking; Mobile Health; Game.
Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
The potential for smartphone-based activity trackers to
support and encourage health related behaviour change has
been widely recognised (see [14, 16, 18] for recent
overviews). We have noticed that activity trackers are
commonly designed as individual trackers that then have
social features added to them. Typically, social features
enable users to post an achievement such as a recent run or
step-count to a social network site such as Facebook. In this
paper we explore a social-first approach, reporting on an
app we have developed and evaluated that takes interacting
with others as prerequisite to tracking an activity. The app,
Pass The Ball, is a team game in which players pass a
virtual ball to each other. Only one user can have the ball at
any one time, and only this user’s activity can be tracked by
the app (the app awards activity points based on a simple
motion tracking algorithm). Teams compete against each
other to score the most points. This creates a coordination
problem, one that requires users to think about and discuss
not just their own activity but also that of others.
For this work we adopted a “research through design”
approach (see [13, 36]). We have created a mobile
application and have studied its use in the wild on people’s
own mobile phones. We have gone through this process
iteratively (as is best practice in design [36]), producing and
trialling the app for two weeks, then refining it and trialling
it again for another two weeks. Gaver [13] argues that
research through design is not about creating artefacts that
embody, confirm or falsify theory, but artefacts that can be
“annotated” by theory. In this paper we use two concepts
from behaviour change theory as annotation: individual
competence and social relatedness. Our work does not
embody, confirm or falsify any particular theory, but treats
these concepts as a way of discussing the relationship,
similarities and differences of Pass The Ball to other
activity trackers. Gaver views design not as a science, but
as a process in which “we may build on one another’s
results, but … also usefully subvert them” (p.946). Our app
is subversive in that it prioritises social-relatedness over
individual-competence, where the converse is the norm.
BACKGROUND
Pedometers have been widely available for a long time
(they were introduced, in their modern form as step
counters, by Yamasa in the 1960s). Recently, smartphone
applications (apps) and networked hardware devices have
begun to offer new possibilities for tracking steps and
myriad other activities, sparking renewed interest in the
relationship between tracking and health related behaviour
change. Pedometers have been shown to have a positive
effect on health related behaviour [34], and it seems a
reasonable expectation that apps and networked hardware
devices can have similar if not greater benefits. Studies
such as [3, 4] are pointing to and cautiously confirming
such benefits. However, with the range of new possibilities
comes a large, complex design space; it is only beginning to
become clear what the effects and relevancies of different
designs are to behaviour change. In this paper we discuss
our exploration of this design space.
Over the last few years, researchers and developers have
been creating apps and devices that augment tracking with
social and game features. Apps such as SpyFeet [30] allow
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission
and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org.
CHI 2015, April 18 - 23 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea Copyright is held
by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM 978-1-4503-3145-6/15/04...$15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702577
Experience Design for Games CHI 2015, Crossings, Seoul, Korea
2417
InteracGon
design

Pass
the
ball:
Enforced
turn
taking
in

acGvity
tracking

John
Rooksby
et
al
(CHI2015)

This
paper:

•  Presents
a
novel
pedometer
based

game
where
team
members
take

it
in
turn
to
count
their
steps

•  Discusses
user
trials
of
two

versions
of
the
game

•  Discusses
the
experiences
and

pracGcaliGes
of
cooperaGve

tracking

Rethinking the Mobile Food Journal:
Exploring Opportunities for Lightweight Photo-Based Capture
Felicia Cordeiro1
, Elizabeth Bales1,2
, Erin Cherry3
, James Fogarty1
1
2
Human Centered Design & Engineering
DUB Group, University of Washington
{felicia0, lizbales, jfogarty}@cs.washington.edu
ABSTRACT
Food choices are among the most frequent and important
health decisions in everyday life, but remain notoriously
difficult to capture. This work examines opportunities for
lightweight photo-based capture in mobile food journals.
We first report on a survey of 257 people, examining how
they define healthy eating, their experiences and challenges
with existing food journaling methods, and their ability to
interpret nutritional information that can be captured in a
food journal. We then report on interviews and a field study
with 27 participants using a lightweight, photo-based food
journal for between 4 to 8 weeks. We discuss mismatches
between motivations and current designs, challenges of
current approaches to food journaling, and opportunities for
photos as an alternative to the pervasive but often inappropriate
emphasis on quantitative tracking in mobile food journals.
Author Keywords
Personal Informatics; Self-Tracking; Food Journals; Photos.
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI).
INTRODUCTION
Food choices are among the most frequent and important
health decisions in everyday life, yet it remains notoriously
difficult to understand our food choices. People eat in many
different contexts and have widely varying motivations and
constraints on food. Being mindful of the quality and quantity
of food choices is a crucial component of a healthy life
[35,36], and food journals can be effective for monitoring
food intake [8,15]. The implications of food also go beyond
health, as food is central to our daily experiences and our
relationship with food varies according to personal contexts
and goals [14]. But food journals impose high burdens that
detract from their potential benefit [11,12]. Effective food
journaling is thus a grand challenge for personal informatics.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal
or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or
distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice
and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work
owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is
permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute
to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org.
CHI 2015, April 18 - 23 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Copyright 2015 ACM 978-1-4503-3145-6/15/04$15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702154
3
Computer Science
University of Rochester
erinc@cs.rochester.edu
Figure 1. An entry in our lightweight photo-based
food journal. No calorie or nutrition information is
shown, as the journal instead logs meal enjoyment,
location context, and social context.
Automated sensing has proven powerful in some domains
of human activity, but remains out of reach for food despite
recent advances [1,3,18,27,29,32,38]. It is also unclear
whether automation is desirable, as it may undermine
in-the-moment awareness created by food journaling [36].
Some existing methods involve taking photos of food as an
intermediate step toward collecting underlying nutritional
information [18,27,38]. We step further back, asking what
people want to capture about food and what value photos
themselves might provide in a lightweight food journal.
Our work examines lightweight photo-based capture and
reflection, reconsidering the common assumption that a
quantitative approach is required. We first present a survey
examining how people define healthy eating, experiences
and challenges with existing food journals, and how people
interpret the healthiness of food presented as either photos
or nutrition labels. We then present interviews and field
deployments of a lightweight, photo-based mobile food
journal. A total of 27 people with varying food goals from
two distinct trials use our application to journal for between
4 to 8 weeks. We explore reactions to a design focused on
food photos in lieu of nutritional information and examine
the value of food photos with regard to their goals. Finally,
we discuss our results in the context of rethinking challenges
and opportunities in the design of mobile food journals.
InteracGon
design

Rethinking
the
mobile
food
journal:

Exploring
opportuniGes
for

lightweight
photo-‐based
capture.

Felicia
Cordeiro
et
al
(CHI2015)

This
paper

•  Presents
a
survey
of
experiences

and
challenges
in
food
journaling

•  Presents
a
ﬁeld
trial
of
a
photo

based
system
for
journaling

•  Discusses
the
pros
and
cons
of

photo
based
and
log
based

approaches.

Personal Tracking as Lived Informatics
John Rooksby, Mattias Rost, Alistair Morrison, Matthew Chalmers
School of Computing Science,
University of Glasgow, UK.
{john.rooksby, mattias.rost, alistair.morrison, matthew.chalmers}@glasgow.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
This paper characterises the use of activity trackers as
‘lived informatics’. This characterisation is contrasted with
other discussions of personal informatics and the quantified
self. The paper reports an interview study with activity
tracker users. The study found: people do not logically
organise, but interweave various activity trackers,
sometimes with ostensibly the same functionality; that
tracking is often social and collaborative rather than
personal; that there are different styles of tracking,
including goal driven tracking and documentary tracking;
and that tracking information is often used and interpreted
with reference to daily or short term goals and decision
making. We suggest there will be difficulties in personal
informatics if we ignore the way that personal tracking is
enmeshed with everyday life and people’s outlook on their
future.
Author Keywords
Activity Tracking; Data; Qualitative methods
Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past few years there has been a proliferation of
mobile apps and consumer devices for tracking personal
information, particularly those related to health and
wellbeing (for example diet, weight, sleep, walking and
exercise). Many apps can be downloaded for free or at low
cost. Some physical devices (such as pedometers) cost
trivial amounts (see [19]). Yet there is also a market for
premium devices (see [11] for a discussion of the FitBit).
Mobile phone manufacturers including Apple and Motorola
have also begun to make specific provisions for activity
tracking by, for example, incorporating always-on
accelerometers into their latest high-end mobile devices.
The advent of smart watches, smart glasses and other forms
of wearable computing in the consumer domain is also
likely to bring further innovation and proliferation in this
area. Personal tracking is, however, not new. People have
long been able to track and manage activities using diaries
and/or personal computers. Tracking can in fact be traced
back to at least Roman times (where trackers were used not
as personal devices but for measuring the mobility of
soldiers). However, with the popularity of smartphones and
digital devices with built in accelerometers and location
services, the area of personal tracking appears to be one of
great investment and growth.
Previous research in this area has predominantly focused on
individual, researcher-supplied technologies. From a health
research perspective, a tracker is either an instrument with
which to measure activity, or an intervention to be applied
across a cohort of people. Standard devices are used, and
often treated as invisible lenses on activity (e.g. [19, 21]). In
health research, consumer trackers are usually used,
whereas evaluation in HCI is usually of a novel prototype
(e.g. [13, 10]). In HCI the devices themselves are not
treated invisibly but, as with health research, evaluation is
predominantly of an individual technology and oriented to
intervention. There is some research looking at integration
of technologies, notably Bentley et al.’s [2] work on health
mashups for behaviour change. Yet even here the
researchers selected what the study participants should use.
The agency of the people using such technologies is too
often denied; Maitland et al.’s [12] study of weight loss and
Mamykina et al.’s [14] study of diabetes management are
rare exceptions. They point out that people choose, use,
interweave and abandon various technologies in their own,
lived efforts to improve their health. They found people
were not changing their behaviour because of a technology,
but were using technology because they wanted to change.
What people decide to track using consumer products, what
trackers they decide to use, and how they use them over
days, weeks, months and potentially lifetimes remains
understudied. Studying individual, researcher supplied
technology is somewhat at odds with the literature around
personal informatics, which suggests that people can and
should track various aspects of their lives. It is also
somewhat at odds with what we already know about
smartphone use. Barkhuus et al. [1] have pointed out that
components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
Permissions@acm.org.
CHI 2014, April 26 - May 01 2014, Toronto, ON, Canada. Copyright is
held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM 978-1-4503-2473-1/14/04 $15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557039
ACM 978-1-4503-2473-1/14/04 $15.00.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557039
Understanding
pracGces

Personal
tracking
as
lived
informaGcs

John
Rooksby
et
al
(CHI2014)

This
paper

•  Presents
a
study
of
users
of

personal
trackers
(apps
and

wearables)

•  Draws
anenGon
to
diﬀerent
styles

and
purposes
of
tracking

•  Draws
anenGon
to
the
ways
in

which
people
use
mulGple

trackers
and
switch
over
Gme

Snot, Sweat, Pain, Mud, and Snow -
Performance and Experience in the Use of Sports Watches
1st Author Name
Affiliation
Address
e-mail address
Optional phone number
2nd Author Name
Affiliation
Address
e-mail address
3rd
Author Name
Affiliation
Address
e-mail address
ABSTRACT
We have conducted interviews with ten elite and
recreational athletes to understand their experiences and
engagement with endurance sport and personal and
wearable sports technology. In the interviews, athletes
emphasized the experiential aspects of doing sports and the
notion of feeling was repeatedly used to talk about their
activities. The technology played both an instrumental role
in measuring performance and feeding bio-data back to
them, and an experiential role in supporting and confirming
the sport experience. To guide further interaction design
research in the sports domain, we suggest two interrelated
ways of looking at sports performances and experiences,
firstly through the notion of a measured sense of
performance, and secondly as a lived-sense of performance.
Author Keywords
Sports, experience, heart rate monitors, feeling.
Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
Measuring results as accurately as possible is the primary
way of assessing performance in sports, and consequently
an important driving force in the development of sports
technology. Here, we attempt to expand what the notion of
performance means in sports, and the implications this has
for interaction design research.
Endurance sports such as running, cycling, triathlon, and
cross-country skiing is currently growing remarkably. This
is seen in increasing participation in races and organized
training groups, and the development of new forms of mass
races such as ultra-marathons, swim-run races over large
distances, and trail running. Hand in hand with this, a
proliferation of mobile technologies dedicated to sports and
exercise has emerged, such as watches, sensors, and apps.
This technical and commercial development has brought
increased attention of HCI to the domain of sports and
novel ways of using technology in sports activities,
examples include social sharing of heart-rate during cycling
[33], interactive shirts for sharing running data [32], and
novel feedback mechanisms for golfers [27], skiers [20],
and runners [26]. So far, a significant part of the research in
interactive sports technologies has been concerned with
socio-motivational technologies [2, 22, 23], new forms of
play [12, 15], gamification [5], bodily interaction [34], and
explorations of technical challenges for wearable sports
technologies [3, 4, 20, 37]. However, when it comes to
supporting, enhancing or augmenting the sporting activities
through deep engagement with the details of their
execution, it turns out that less work has been reported.
Counter-examples include [11, 18] which led to an
innovative training device for advanced psychomotor skills
in handball, Stienstra et al.’s. [33] work on sonification of
speed skating motion; and Spelmezan’s [32] vibrational
feedback for snowboarding instruction.
By drawing on a set of “in-depth interviews” with elite and
recreational athletes, we map out key characteristics of
athletes’ experiences and engagement in endurance sports,
and technologies that support this in various ways such as
sports watches and heart-rate monitors. For a large group of
engaged athletes, there is a close connection between the
experience of the sport and how it is performed, and sports
is valued for a lot more than pure measurable performance.
Moreover, it is not only goals and results that motivate
athletes, but a rich flora of additional factors such as the
reward from meeting various challenges, the ability to
manage exertion and fatigue, and the sheer fun and
enjoyment of running, skiing, and cycling. Reoccurring in
our material was the notion of feeling, and the various roles
it played in building instrumental and experiential aspects
of the athletes’ performances. As put by one of our
participants:
“.. and then you run ten kilometers and it feels like… well,
did I run or am I going to run? I don’t feel the difference in
my legs. That feeling is priceless in a way.” Karl
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Understanding
pracGces

Snot,
Sweat,
Pain,
Mud
and
Snow
–

Performance
and
Experience
in
the

Use
of
Sports
Watches

Jakob
Tholander
et
al
(CHI2015)

This
paper

•  Presents
an
interview
study
with

endurance
athletes

•  Draws
anenGon
to
feelings
and

the
roles
they
play
in
sport

•  Points
out
that
trackers
quanGfy

things
that
can
be
felt
and

therefore
help
understand
feeling

and
represent
feeling

Concealing or Revealing Mobile Medical Devices?
Designing for Onstage and Offstage Presentation
Aisling Ann O’Kane
UCL Interaction Centre
University College London
London, United Kingdom
a.okane@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Yvonne Rogers
y.rogers@ucl.ac.uk
Ann Blandford
a.blandford@ucl.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
Adults with Type 1 Diabetes have choices regarding the
technology they use to self-manage their chronic condition.
They can use glucose meters, insulin pumps, smartphone
apps, and other technologies to support their everyday care.
However, little is known about how their social lives might
influence what they adopt or how they use technologies. A
multi-method study was conducted to examine contextual
factors that influence their technology use. While individual
differences play a large role in everyday use, social factors
were also found to influence use. For example, people can
hide their devices in uncertain social situations or show
them off to achieve a purpose. We frame these social
behaviours using Goffman’s theatre metaphor of onstage
and offstage behaviour, and discuss how this kind of
analysis can inform the design of future mobile medical
devices for self-management of chronic conditions.
INTRODUCTION
Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is a serious chronic condition that
can involve the use of various mobile medical devices to
support everyday self-care, and people’s adoption and use
of diabetes technologies can differ significantly as devices
become individually appropriated [36]. The range of T1D
technologies includes glucose meters, continuous glucose
meters, insulin pumps, and mobile phone applications. As
T1D devices are mobile and need to be used in various
contexts, it is important to understand how user experience
might influence how devices are used in practice.
T1D is an auto-immune chronic condition that is often
associated with childhood onset [27], but people of all ages
can be diagnosed with it. It involves the pancreas producing
insufficient quantities of insulin, a hormone required for the
regulation of blood glucose (BG), but the condition can be
managed [21]. For T1D, careful self-management practices
are encouraged by medical practitioners: low BG levels
(hypoglycemia, or ‘hypos’) can lead to immediate health
concerns, including feeling physically ill or even falling
unconscious, while excess levels of BG (hyperglycemia or
‘hypers’) can eventually culminate in complications, such
as eye, foot, kidney, and heart disease. Personal
management practices include calculating medication doses
to inject based on factors such as personal situation (e.g.
digested sugars and carbohydrates, exercise, sickness, and
stress), temperature/weather, their current BG level, and
past experience. Balancing BG levels with ingested glucose
and injected insulin can control the condition, significantly
reducing the impact on a person’s life.
Most diabetes care involves some form of self-
management. This means people with diabetes are “more
than passive recipients of medical expertise” [10]. Lutfey
and Wishner [22] suggest that the term ‘compliance’ should
not be used in efforts to improve self-management
practices. Instead, they propose using ‘adherence’, which
suggests appropriate autonomy in defining and following
self-management plans for diabetes. However, people’s
plans are not necessarily the same as the actions they take:
actions are contingent on the unfolding context [39], which
is relational, dynamic, occasioned, and arising from the on-
going activity [9]. This is of particular relevance when
looking at the self-management plans of people with T1D,
where self-management occurs on a “daily basis within the
context of the other goals, priorities, health issues, family
demands, and other personal concerns that make up their
lives” [10]. Self-management practices vary [37] but there
is little research on how mobile T1D technologies are
chosen to be used for everyday self-management and how
everyday social life might influence practice.
To address this gap, we conducted three user studies that
examined how T1D devices are adopted, carried, and used.
We used contextual interviews, a diary study, and
observation of a T1D group meet-up. In the data analysis
reported here, we used Goffman’s theatre metaphor of how
people present themselves to others. This conceptual
framing provides insight into the nuanced ways adults with
TID conceal or reveal the use of mobile self-management
devices in social situations, which could benefit the design
of future mobile self-management devices for chronic
conditions.
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies
are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and
that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page.
Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM
must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy
otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists,
requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions
from Permissions@acm.org.
CHI 2015, April 18 - 23, 2015, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to
ACM.
ACM 978-1-4503-3145-6/15/04…$15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702453
Understanding
pracGces

Concealing
or
Revealing
Mobile

Medical
Devices?
Designing
for

Onstage
and
Oﬀstage
PresentaGon.

Aisling
O'Kane
et
al
(CHI
2015)

This
paper

•  Explores
the
occasions
in
which

adults
with
type
1
diabetes

conceal
or
reveal
their

technologies.

•  Discusses
how
users
seek
to

customise
technologies
to
bener

suit
social
situaGons

A Stage-Based Model of Personal Informatics Systems
Ian Li1
, Anind Dey1
, and Jodi Forlizzi1,2
1
Human Computer Interaction Institute, 2
School of Design
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
ianli@cmu.edu, {anind, forlizzi}@cs.cmu.edu
ABSTRACT
People strive to obtain self-knowledge. A class of systems
called personal informatics is appearing that help people
collect and reflect on personal information. However, there
is no comprehensive list of problems that users experience
using these systems, and no guidance for making these
systems more effective. To address this, we conducted
surveys and interviews with people who collect and reflect
on personal information. We derived a stage-based model
of personal informatics systems composed of five stages
(preparation, collection, integration, reflection, and action)
and identified barriers in each of the stages. These stages
have four essential properties: barriers cascade to later
stages; they are iterative; they are user-driven and/or
system-driven; and they are uni-faceted or multi-faceted.
From these properties, we recommend that personal
informatics systems should 1) be designed in a holistic
manner across the stages; 2) allow iteration between stages;
3) apply an appropriate balance of automated technology
and user control within each stage to facilitate the user
experience; and 4) explore support for associating multiple
facets of people’s lives to enrich the value of systems.
Author Keywords
Personal informatics, collection, reflection, model, barriers
H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
General Terms
Design, Human Factors
INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION
The importance of knowing oneself has been known since
ancient times. Ancient Greeks who pilgrimaged to the
Temple of Apollo at Delphi to find answers were greeted
with the inscription “Gnothi seauton” or “Know thyself”.
To this day, people still strive to obtain self-knowledge.
One way to obtain self-knowledge is to collect information
about oneself—one’s behaviors, habits, and thoughts—and
reflect on them. Computers can facilitate this activity
because of advances in sensor technologies, ubiquity of
access to information brought by the Internet, and
improvements in visualizations. A class of systems called
personal informatics is appearing that help people collect
and reflect on personal information (e.g., Mint,
http://mint.com, for finance and Nike+, http://nikeplus.com,
for physical activity).
Personal informatics represents an interesting area of study
in human-computer interaction. First, these systems help
people better understand their behavior. While many
technologies inform people about the world, personal
informatics systems inform people about themselves.
Second, people participate in both the collection of
behavioral information as well as the exploration and
understanding of the information. This poses demands on
users that need to be explored. Finally, we do not know all
the problems that people may experience with personal
informatics systems. We know that people want to get
information about themselves to reflect on, and that systems
that support this activity need to be effective and simple to
use. Identifying problems that people experience in
collecting and making sense of personal information while
using such systems is critical for designing and developing
effective personal informatics.
To date, there is no comprehensive list of problems that
users experience using these systems. Toward this end, we
conducted surveys and interviews with people who collect
and reflect on personal information. From this, we derived a
model of personal informatics systems organized by stages,
which emphasizes the interdependence of the different parts
of personal informatics systems.
We provide three main contributions in this paper: 1) we
identify problems across personal informatics tools, 2) we
introduce and discuss a model that improves the diagnosis,
assessment, and prediction of problems in personal
informatics systems, and 3) we make recommendations
about how to improve existing systems and build new and
effective personal informatics systems.
In the next section, we provide a working definition of
personal informatics and review related literature. We
present the method and findings from our survey, and use
them to introduce a stage-based model of personal
informatics systems. We describe the barriers encountered
in each stage and highlight opportunities for intervention
within each stage. We also compare and analyze existing
systems to demonstrate the use of the model for diagnosing
CHI 2010, April 10–15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Copyright 2010 ACM 978-1-60558-929-9/10/04....$10.00.
CriGcal
perspecGves

A
stage
based
model
of
personal

informaGcs
systems

Ian
Li
et
al
(CHI2010)

This
paper

•  Introduces
and
defines
the
field
of

"Personal
InformaGcs"

•  IdenGfies
common
problems

across
personal
informaGcs

systems

•  Introduces
a
model
of
personal

informaGcs
for
systems
designers

Problematising Upstream Technology through Speculative
Design: The Case of Quantified Cats and Dogs
Shaun Lawson, Ben Kirman, Conor Linehan, Tom Feltwell, Lisa Hopkins
Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre
University of Lincoln, UK
{slawson, bkirman, clinehan, tfeltwell,
lhopkins} @ lincoln.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
There is growing interest in technology that quantifies
aspects of our lives. This paper draws on critical practice
and speculative design to explore, question and
problematise the ultimate consequences of such technology
using the quantification of companion animals (pets) as a
case study. We apply the concept of ‘moving upstream’ to
study such technology and use a qualitative research
approach in which both pet owners, and animal behavioural
experts, were presented with, and asked to discuss,
speculative designs for pet quantification applications, the
design of which were extrapolated from contemporary
trends. Our findings indicate a strong desire among pet
owners for technology that has little scientific justification,
whilst our experts caution that the use of technology to
augment human-animal communication has the potential to
disimprove animal welfare, undermine human-animal
bonds, and create human-human conflicts. Our discussion
informs wider debates regarding quantification technology.
Author Keywords
Personal informatics; critical design; design fiction; animal-
computer interaction; the Quantified Dog.
Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
HCI, as a discipline, is increasingly concerned with the
wider social and cultural implications of design practice [5,
6]. Dunne and Raby [14] argue that design as critique,
through practices such as speculative design, can be
valuable in the problematisation of technologies. They
suggest that by “moving upstream and exploring ideas
before they become products…designers can look into the
possible consequences of technological applications before
they happen” [14]. This paper uses the perspectives of
critical and speculative design in order to explore an area of
near-future/upstream technology that is of substantial
interest to both commercial developers and researchers –
the “quantification of everything” via the deployment of
technology that quantifies multiple aspects of our lives.
Consumers now have access to a plethora of interactive
web and mobile apps, often coupled with sensors, which
can facilitate the casual collection, aggregation,
visualization and sharing of data about the self. As observed
in [48], technology has been available to measure e.g.
“sleep, exercise, sex food, mood, location, alertness,
productivity and even spiritual wellbeing” for quite some
time. Engagement with such self-tracking and monitoring is
part of an inter-related set of practices variously labelled as
personal informatics and the quantified-self. These labels
emphasize that it is the self that is the object under scrutiny,
however it is also apparent that consumers will soon have
access to technology that can also track, measure, log and
interpret the behaviour of not only the self but of the people
and things that are important to them and that surround
them in their everyday lives; this could, for instance,
include their partners and children [35, 43], their elderly
relatives [7], homes [12] and pets [16].
The deployment of quantifying technology has widely-
claimed, and far-reaching, positive outcomes and benefits
both for individuals and society [48, 25]. Indeed, the HCI
and ubicomp communities continue to play a leading role in
determining the direction of research in this area e.g. as is
evidenced through a continuous rolling schedule of
workshops such as [24, 31]. Through these workshops, and
a growing body of published work, it is evident that there is
sustained research interest, generally, in the technical, user-
centred and privacy issues raised by the proliferation of
personal tracking technology. However, there is limited
existing research by the HCI, or indeed any, research
community, that takes a more critical perspective on the
design of tracking and quantifying technologies, and that,
for instance, challenges the positivist assumptions about its
longer term implications.
In this paper we present a case study that takes a critical
approach towards the understanding of the implications of
the increasing prevalence, and unquestioning acceptance, of
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CriGcal
perspecGves

ProblemaGsing
upstream
technology

through
speculaGve
design:
The
case

of
quanGfied
cats
and
dogs

Shaun
Lawson
et
al
(CHI2015)

This
paper

•  Argues
that
we
too
readily
accept

ideas
around
the
quanGfied
self

and
'quanGfied
everything'

•  They
use
a
design
ficGon
based

approach
to
explore
problems

with
"upstream
technology"
for

quanGfying
cats
and
dogs.

CriGcal
perspecGves

How
to
evaluate
technologies
for

health
behaviour
change
in
HCI

research

Predrag
Klasnja
et
al
(CHI2011)

This
paper

•  Argues
that
the
role
of
HCI
cannot

be
to
demonstrate
behaviour

change,
which
requires
large,
long

term
studies
(RCTs)

•  Argues
that
evaluaGon
of
new

technology
should
be
ﬁeld
trials
of

designs
linked
to
behavioural

change
strategies

How to Evaluate Technologies for
Health Behavior Change in HCI Research
Predrag Klasnja1
, Sunny Consolvo3
, & Wanda Pratt1,2
1
Information School & DUB group
Seattle, WA 98195, USA
klasnja@uw.edu
2
Biomedical & Health Informatics
wpratt@uw.edu
3
Intel Labs Seattle
sunny.consolvo@intel.com
ABSTRACT
New technologies for encouraging physical activity, healthy
diet, and other types of health behavior change now
frequently appear in the HCI literature. Yet, how such
technologies should be evaluated within the context of HCI
research remains unclear. In this paper, we argue that the
obvious answer to this question—that evaluations should
assess whether a technology brought about the intended
change in behavior—is too limited. We propose that
demonstrating behavior change is often infeasible as well as
unnecessary for a meaningful contribution to HCI research,
especially when in the early stages of design or when
evaluating novel technologies. As an alternative, we
suggest that HCI contributions should focus on efficacy
evaluations that are tailored to the specific behavior-change
intervention strategies (e.g., self-monitoring, conditioning)
embodied in the system and studies that help gain a deep
understanding of people’s experiences with the technology.
Author Keywords
Evaluation methods, behavior change, health informatics,
user studies.
H5.2 Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
User interfaces (Evaluation/Methodology). J.3 Life and
Medical Sciences: Medical information systems.
General Terms
Experimentation, measurement.
INTRODUCTION
In the last several years, there has been an explosion of HCI
research on technologies for supporting health behavior
change. HCI researchers have developed systems for
encouraging physical activity [2,7,8,24], healthy diet
[12,17,23], glycemic control in diabetes [26,39], and self-
regulation of emotions [31]. Work in this area is rapidly
becoming a staple at many of the field’s preeminent
publishing venues.
This work has the potential to make a meaningful impact on
society. The prevalence of chronic diseases such as
diabetes, obesity, and coronary heart disease continue to
rise and are now responsible for over 70% of U.S.
healthcare expenditures [20]. Some of the most important
risk factors for these conditions are behavioral, including
smoking, physical inactivity, excessive food intake, and
diets heavy in trans fats. A successful change in these
behaviors is a fundamental aspect of both prevention and
effective management of chronic conditions, as well as an
important contributor to health and wellbeing more broadly.
Due to their low cost, high penetration, and integration in
people’s everyday lives, technologies such as mobile
phones, web applications, and social networking tools hold
great promise for supporting individuals as they strive to
adopt and sustain health-promoting behaviors. HCI research
can significantly contribute to the design of innovative and
effective tools that help people in these efforts.
However, as HCI researchers increasingly engage in the
design of systems for health behavior change, an important
question arises: how should interventions for health
behavior change be evaluated within the context of HCI
research? The question is twofold. First, what types of
evaluations are appropriate and useful for systems that HCI
researchers in this area are developing? And second, how
should the research output of this work—primarily in the
form of publications—be evaluated? These questions are
key, we believe, to moving this area of HCI forward, and
their careful consideration should aid both researchers and
reviewers working in this area.
In this paper, we argue that the obvious answer to these
questions—namely, that the goal of an evaluation of a
technology for health behavior change should be to show
that the technology brought about the intended change in
behavior—is too limited. We argue that behavior change in
the traditional clinical sense is not the right metric for
evaluating early stage technologies that are developed in the
context of HCI research. However, a narrower notion of
efficacy, one that tailors outcome measures to the particular
intervention strategies a technology employs, can enable
HCI researchers to test whether their systems are doing
what they are intended to do even at early stages of
development. Just as importantly, qualitative studies that
CHI 2011, May 7–12, 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0267-8/11/05...$10.00.

Summary

•  In
this
lecture
I
have

–  Given
examples
of
self
tracking
technology
and

applicaGons

–  Given
a
brief
history
of
tracking,
poinGng
out
that
it
is
not

a
new
area

•  Discussed
the
relaGonship
of
tracking
with

–  Mobile
health

–  Health
behaviour
change

•  Illustrated
the
role
of
HCI
with
a
selecGon
of
papers
from
CHI

(the
main
annual
HCI
conference)

References

1.  Consolvo,
S.,
Everin,
K.,
Smith,
I.,
Landay,
J.
(2006)
Design
requirements
for
technologies
that

encourage
physical
acGvity.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2006,
457-‐466.

2.  Consolvo,
S.,
McDonald,
D.,
Toscos,
T.,
et
al
(2008)
AcGvity
sensing
in
the
wild:
A
ﬁeld
trial
of

UbiFit
Garden.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2008,
1797-‐1806.

3.  Cordeiro,
F.,
Bales,
E.,
Cherry,
E.,
Fogarty,
J.
(2015)
Rethinking
the
mobile
food
journal:

Exploring
opportuniGes
for
lightweight
photo
based
capture.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2015,

3207-‐3216.

4.  Crawford,
K.,
Lingel,
J.,
&
Karppi,
T.
(2015)
Our
metrics,
our
selves:
A
hundred
years
of
self-‐
tracking
from
the
weight
scale
to
the
wrist
wearable
device.
European
Journal
of
Cultural

Studies
2015,
18(4-‐5),
479-‐496.

5.  Han,
T.,
Xiao,
X.,
Shi,
L.,
Canny,
J.,
Wang,
J.
(2015)
Balancing
accuracy
and
fun:
designing

camera
based
mobile
games
for
implicit
heart
rate
monitoring.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI

2015,
847-‐856.

6.  Khot,
R.A.,
Lee,
J.,
Aggarwal,
D.,
Hjorth,
L.,
Mueller,
F.
(2015)
TastyBeats:
Designing
palatable

representaGons
of
physical
acGvity.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2015,
2933-‐2942.

References

7.  Klasnja,
P.,
Consolvo,
S.,
&
Pran,
W.
(2011)
How
to
evaluate
technologies
for
health

behaviour
chnage
in
HCI
research.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2011,
3063-‐3072.

8.  Klasnja,
P.,
Pran,
W.
(2011)
Healthcare
in
the
pocket:
Mapping
the
space
of
mobile-‐phone

intervenGons.
Journal
of
Biomedical
InformaGcs
45
(2012)
184-‐198.

9.  Lawson,
S.,
Kirman,
B.,
Linehan,
C.,
Feltwell,
T.,
Hopkins,
L.
(2015)
ProblemaGsing
upstream

technology
through
speculaGve
design:
The
case
of
quanGﬁed
cats
and
dogs.
Proceedings
of

CHI
2015.
2663-‐2672.

10.  Li,
I.,
Dey,
A.,
&
Forlizzi,
J.
(2010)
A
stage-‐based
model
of
personal
informaGcs
systems.

Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2010,
557-‐566.

11.  Mueller,
F.,
Muirhead,
M.,
(2015)
Jogging
with
a
quadcopter.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2015.

2023-‐2032.

12.  O'Kane,
A.,
Rogers,
Y.,
Blandford,
A.
(2015)
Concealing
or
revealing
mobile
devices?

Designing
for
onstage
and
oﬀstage
presentaGon.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2015,
1689-‐1698.

References

13.  Olla,
P.,
&
Shimskey,
C.
(2014)
mHealth
taxonomy:
a
literature
survey
of
mobile
health

applicaGons.
Health
Technol.
(2014)
4:299-‐308

14.  Rooksby,
J.,
Rost,
M.,
Morrison,
A.,
&
Chalmers,
M.
(2014)
Pass
the
ball:
Enforced
turn
taking

in
acGvity
tracking.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2015,
2417-‐2426.

15.  Rooksby,
J.,
Rost,
M.,
Morrison,
A.,
&
Chalmers,
M.
(2014)
Personal
tracking
as
lived

informaGcs.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2014,
1163-‐1172.

16.  Simm,
W.,
Ferrario,
M.A.,
Gradinar,
A.,
Whinle,
J.
(2014)
Prototyping
Clasp:
ImplicaGons
for

designing
digital
technology
for
and
with
adults
with
auGsm.
Proceedings
of
ACM
DIS2014,

345-‐354.

17.  Tholander,
J.,
Nylander,
S.
(2015)
Snot,
Sweat,
Pain,
Mud,
and
Snow:
Performance
and

experience
in
the
use
of
sportswatches.
Proceedings
of
ACM
CHI
2015.
2913-‐2922.

Images

Apple
watch
–
apple.com

MyFitnessPal
app
–
myﬁtnesspal.com

Withings
scales
–
withings.com

Moodnotes
app
–
Ustwo.com

Diabetes
devices
-‐
hnp://news.utoronto.ca/meet-‐bant-‐diabetes-‐iphone-‐app

Argus
app
–
azumio.com

Digital
stress
–
from
Simm
et
al
2014.

Manpo-‐Meter
–
hnp://www.yamasa-‐tokei.co.jp/

Penny
scales
–
from
Crawford
et
al
2015.

Mobile
health
taxonomy
–
from
Olla
&
Shimskey
2014.

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