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Visualization of Human Behavior Data: The Quantified Self
Abstract
Although in recent years the Quantified Self (QS) application domain is growing, there are still some palpable fundamental problems that relegate the QS movement in a phase of low maturity. The first is a technological problem, and specifically, a lack of maturity in technologies for the collection, processing, and data visualization. This is accompanied by a perhaps more fundamental problem of deficit, bias, and lack of integration of aspects concerning the human side of the QS idea. The step that the authors tried to make in this chapter is to highlight aspects that could lead to a more robust approach in QS area. This was done, primarily, through a new approach in data visualization and, secondly, through a necessary management of complexity, both in technological terms and, for what concerns the human side of the whole issue, in theoretical terms. The authors have gone a little further stressing how the future directions of research could lead to significant impacts on both individual and social level.
... Quantified self (QS), also known as Personal Informatics (PI), is the concept of tracking, recording, and analyzing any kind of biological, physical, behavioral, or environmental information about ourselves in order to find previously unknown patterns [1,2]. Thanks to smartphones and tracking devices, everyone can collect and monitor traits of "the self" at every time and everywhere: a self-tracker can use a PI system to acquire data on parameters of interest. ...
... Therapists, indeed, ask patients to keep track of their changing emotional states (together with other aspects of their daily lives). The monitoring activity is conducted in order to (1) help people with depression and other mood disorders; (2) better understand why symptoms occur; (3) find correlations among data that suggest a change of their behavior in a particular direction; and, once a consistent amount of data has been gathered (4) check if the treatments are working or not. ...
... As stated in Section 2, two principal tracking mechanisms for qualitative phenomena like mood and emotion exist: the self-tracker specifies qualitative descriptors such as words to monitor activities or inputs numbers, whereby qualitative phenomena have been modulated onto quantitative scales (e.g., my mood today is 7 on a 10-point scale). Several applications, research works, and technological tools addressed to this aim, either self-reported or automatic, have been developed so far [1]. ...
Nowadays Personal Informatics (PI) devices are used for sensing and saving personal data, everywhere and at any time, helping people improve their lives by highlighting areas of good and bad performances and providing a general awareness of different levels of conduct. However, not all these data are suitable to be automatically collected. This is especially true for emotions and mood. Moreover, users without experience in self-tracking may have a misperception of PI applications’ limits and potentialities. We believe that current PI tools are not designed with enough understanding of such users’ needs, desires, and problems they may encounter in their everyday lives. We designed and prototype the Mood TUI (Tangible User Interface), a PI tool that supports the self-reporting of mood data using a tangible interface. The platform is able to gather six different mood states and it was tested through several participatory design sessions in a secondary/high school. The solution proposed allows gathering mood values in an amusing, simple, and appealing way. Users appreciated the prototypes, suggesting several possible improvements as well as ideas on how to use the prototype in similar or totally different contexts, and giving us hints for future research.
... Forecasts predict that up to 245 million units will be sold in 2019, compared to the 84 million devices sold in 2015 (CCS Insight, 2016). Wearable devices and self-tracking applications allow people to monitor their health (e.g., diet, fitness, mood, sleep) work-related performance (e.g., productivity, creativity) and even leisure activities (e.g., travel, music) (Li, Dey & Forlizzi, 2011;Marcengo & Rapp, 2014;Silverman & Barasch, 2016). Among the devices available on the market today are wearable cameras that record films based on what individuals see during the day, some wearable augmented-reality headsets that adapt sound to someone's bodily needs and environmental noise, and even certain mobile applications that allow users to record information about sexual activities and to compare their performance to the global average. ...
... Current research shows that self-quantification is a process consisting of several stages (Choe et al., 2014;Marcengo & Rapp, 2014;Sjöklint, 2014): data collection, visual representation of data, cross-linking of data to discover correlations, gaining insights, and acting upon insights. A stage-based model of personal informatics systems incorporates all these stages (Li et al., 2010). ...
... Most commonly, individuals self-track physiological states such as body temperature, heart rate, or breathing patterns. Some individuals also measure their states of mind (e.g., mood, energy levels, thinking patterns), their location (e.g., destinations visited), timings (e.g., performance time intervals), and the people they interact with (Marcengo & Rapp, 2014). Data can be acquired through direct self-measuring by using wearable technologies or sensors, through inferences (e.g., using algorithms to derive final data), or through self-reporting, such as manual data entry (Marcengo & Rapp, 2014). ...
An increasing number of people are tracking their fitness activities, work performance and leisure experiences using body sensors (e.g., wrist-bands or smart watches) and mobile applications. This trend, referred to as self-quantification, is driven by various motivations, from curiosity to a desire to improve performance. As self-quantification by means of digital devices is a new behavioural trend, the phenomenon has only recently received academic attention. Neither antecedents nor the implications of this phenomenon have been thoroughly investigated. This paper aims to address these gaps. Based on the literature on self-quantification, privacy and self-disclosure, we empirically test the relationship among personality traits, privacy, self-quantification and self-disclosure. The findings suggest that conscientiousness and emotional stability are associated with self-quantification. In addition, we find a significant effect of self-quantification on self-disclosure in the survey context, indicating that individuals who habitually use self-tracking applications and wearable devices are also more likely to disclose personal data in other contexts.
... The concept of the quantified-self is based upon a new phenomenon wherein people voluntarily monitor their lives to better understand themselves (Lupton, 2014). Indeed, the notion of self-monitoring and tracking has a fairly long history that can be traced back to the 1970s (Kopp, 1988;Marcengo & Rapp, 2014). Since then, the concept of self-monitoring has proven effective in changing people's attitude and behaviors, which is the goal of an embodied function in the sensing technologies (Choe, Lee, Lee, Pratt, & Kientz, 2014). ...
... Since then, the concept of self-monitoring has proven effective in changing people's attitude and behaviors, which is the goal of an embodied function in the sensing technologies (Choe, Lee, Lee, Pratt, & Kientz, 2014). The motivation behind this movement is to gain self-knowledge by tracking one's life to "optimize" behavior through the process of quantification (Choe et al., 2014;Marcengo & Rapp, 2014). Having these motivations, quantified-self participants have identified several benefits to this process including acquiring data about their lives, monitors and even challenging themselves, and eventually receiving feedback resulting from comparisons between their actual life activities and goals, and potentially, other similar individuals. ...
... As can be seen in Table 1, people sometimes are required to have sufficient knowledge and additional effort to manually keep the record of their behaviors and feelings (e.g., steps taken, well-being, happiness, calorie intake, and the number of cups of coffee). However, there are a number of technologies which have the capacity to measure/track people in largely invisible ways (Marcengo & Rapp, 2014;Swan, 2012). These 'smart' products and devices now have the capability of somehow capturing or reflecting much of our surroundings and behaviors in real-time unobtrusively and unconsciously and interact with each other so as to gain a general 'understanding' of our current circumstances (Lupton, 2014); for example, driving habits and possible drowsiness can be monitored so as to alert drivers to be safe. ...
This chapter provides a foundation for developing practical applications of wearable devices and related technologies for the tourism industry. It is posited that technologies related to the quantified self perfectly match the needs of context-relevant information and therefore offers a number of opportunities to shape tourism experiences. As such, the information collected through this technology enables tourism destinations to understand not only each individual traveler, but also the collective market in much greater detail, and consequently enables them to design much more compelling and efficient tourism services.
... Whilst the direct objective measurement of health outcomes was perceived to be important for determining intervention effectiveness, the co-creators also expressed concerns about employers having access to individual physical activity data. This sentiment has been echoed within the wider literature where privacy and ethical concerns around the 'quantified self' and tracking individual health data have been expressed (Marcengo & Rapp, 2014). Within the current study, the co-creators suggested that direct objective measures should be voluntary, and employees given the choice about who this information is shared with. ...
... A primary concern expressed by the co-creators was that sharing personal health data with employers may lead to resistance. This perception is consistent with wider concerns around the ethical issues of tracking individual health data (Marcengo & Rapp, 2014). As such, the co-creators suggested that the sharing of individual data should be voluntary. ...
Globally, physical activity levels have declined sharply and it has been estimated that up to 42% of individuals within developed countries are classified as being physically inactive. Insufficient physical activity is a substantial health risk and has been associated with negative psychophysiological outcomes including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and depression. Whilst there are many contributors to physical inactivity the workplace has been identified as a particularly significant contributor. Consistently high levels of sedentary behaviour have been documented within many modern workplaces, with employees spending up to 81% of working hours seated in white collar roles. Given that approximately 58% of global workforce will spend one third of their adult life at
work, the workplace has been identified as a key domain in which researchers can deliver
interventions to promote physical activity. Despite this, evidence for the efficacy of workplace physical activity interventions has been mixed. One potential explanation for this is an underutilisation of participatory approaches during intervention design. Within organisational research, concerns have been expressed regarding a widening gap between research and practice.Whilst interventions may be academically robust they may lack sufficient relevancy to the employees that they are intended to support. To address these issues this thesis adopted a pragmatic, participatory stance and drew upon co-creation methodologies to develop a new workplace physical activity intervention that would meet the needs of employees.
... The QS approach has been used in a variety of tools to collect information exclusively intended for self-reflection and self-monitoring, with the aim of giving employees information about their personal behaviours, choices and lifestyles. This approach originated from the self-quantified movementa new lifelogging research branch that aims to incorporate technology to acquire and collect information on different aspects of people's daily lives (Marcengo and Rapp, 2014). On the other hand, passive monitoring can capture user activities passively and can be triggered without the user being directly contacted, involved or requested to take action (Rivera-Pelayo et al., 2012). ...
... Ciocchetti (2011) added that monitoring practices are all unpleasant if abused, and, thus the new monitoring regime in the organization should require employers to provide advance notification of monitoring practices to employees. Quantified self (QS) is a new branch of research that uses monitoring and rendering of humanbehaviour-generated data to persuade people to change their practices in everyday-life (Marcengo and Rapp, 2014). The purpose of collecting human-generated data is to allow for self-monitoring and selfreflection related to some kind of change or improvement in people's behavioural, psychological and medical conditions. ...
The use of online social networking services is considerably more accessible today due to advances in ICT in workplaces. Employees are spending more time on Internet engaging in non-work-related activities, such as maintaining personal networks, interacting with friends, streaming music and video, checking sports scores and following Web bookmarks by visiting various online social venues. As such, organizations are increasingly concerned about maintaining a stable workforce, and thus they make the use of monitoring systems. However, the current monitoring practices violate employees' reasonable expectation of privacy, decrease self-determination and cause employees to complain and possibly increase intent to quit jobs. We present the use of passive monitoring in the workplace as a new tool to observe employees' Internet activities with objective measures. Based on Self Quantified movement, we aim to design a system that can passively monitor employees, provide visualization feedback based on their Internet usage activities, and allow employees to understand the implications of their actions concerning the boundary between work-related and non-work related Internet activities.
... Although self-tracking devices allow instant collection of data with little effort and also provide information that is neutral and unbiased, the positive effects of self-tracking on self-knowledge can only be achieved if people are able to read and understand the visualizations that are produced (Marcengo & Rapp, 2014). The endgame of self-tracking is for people to adjust their behavior when they become aware of patterns, progress, or lack thereof. ...
contexts during their stay abroad. In this empirical study, we examined how a group of international students (n=10) in France used their smartphones during the eight-week lockdown that imposed on everyone a stay-at-home order and allowed minimal physical contact (April and May 2020). We collected data about students’ use thanks to a self-tracking app and interviews. Drawing on literature from the fields of language education, communication, and psychology, we considered advantages and limitations of smartphone use by international students pertaining to three aspects of their lives: (1) emotional management, (2) language and culture learning, and (3) sociocultural adaptation. Since international students were in the host country, but without the social life on campus that usually makes immersion abroad so special, this study led us to reflections about immersion and inclusion in education abroad. Abstract in French Les smartphones accompagnent les étudiants internationaux dans leur adaptation à différents contextes pendant leur séjour à l'étranger. Dans cette étude empirique, nous avons examiné comment un groupe d'étudiants internationaux (n=10) en France a utilisé leurs smartphones pendant le confinement de 8 semaines qui a imposé à tous de rester à la maison et a engendré un contact physique minimal (avril et mai 2020). Nous avons recueilli des données sur les usages des étudiants grâce à une application d’auto-suivi et des entretiens. En nous appuyant sur la littérature dans les domaines de l'enseignement des langues, de la communication et de la psychologie, nous avons examiné les avantages et les limites de l'utilisation du smartphone par les étudiants internationaux en ce qui concerne trois aspects de leur vie : (1) la gestion des émotions, (2) l'apprentissage de la langue et de la culture, et (3) l'adaptation socioculturelle. Étant donné que les étudiants internationaux se trouvaient dans le pays d'accueil, mais sans la vie sociale sur le campus qui rend habituellement l'immersion à l'étranger si spéciale, cette étude nous a amenés à réfléchir à l'immersion et à l'inclusion dans l'éducation à l'étranger.
... Researchers have often been interested in self-tracking for goals related to relection, such as understanding people's self-relection behaviors on self-tracked data [58], and enabling self-trackers to ind meaning [30] and insights in and relect on their own data through visualizations [17]. Users are interested in self-tracking for goals like self-monitoring, self-relection, and behavioral/psychological/medical change or improvement [61]. Other lines of research have sought to understand how relection on past data and experience can impact current mood [44,48,52]. ...
When studying identity transitions, interview participants can find it difficult to reflect on their transitions and recall specific details related to past experiences. We present a new approach to enable participant reflection on past identity transitions, and a means to fill in blanks by eliciting data that may not otherwise come up: showing participants sentiment visualizations of their social media data. After detailing our methods of constructing sentiment visualizations, we discuss our experiences using them in a study on gender transition. For most participants, the visualizations elicited substantial reflection, and enabled recalling forgotten data and new interpretations of transition experiences. We guide researchers on how to use this method when studying other identity transitions; this may be especially powerful for marginalized people who undergo substantial identity changes. This paper proposes a way to uncover participants’ personal histories, which can help HCI researchers to better understand and support marginalized people’s experiences.
... Developers put a great effort in finding more effective sensing techniques transforming what the person "is" into a series of quantifiable parameters that can be automatically detected by sensing the person's "outside" (e.g., movements and physiological parameters, Tag et al., 2017;Quiroz et al., 2013). Wearable data can be then used to increase the person's self-knowledge (Li et al., 2010), in line with the "Quantified Self ideology", which accompanied the rise in popularity of activity trackers (Marcengo & Rapp, 2014;Rapp & Cena, 2014). This "knowledge" consists in objective numbers and appears exact (Lupton, 2014), unless the wearable in charge of collecting the data is inaccurate. ...
Wearable technologies are increasing both in number and variety enabling new ways for collecting personal data, as well as novel interaction modalities. Even though the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community has widely explored the potential applications of wearables, its theoretical contribution on this research field has been far from impressive. Most scholars and designers seem to rely on a series of dominant assumptions that look at wearables “from the outside” by focusing on their “external properties.” When these assumptions are fully embraced at design-time, however, they may cloud opportunities for designing for the “internal aspects” of our everyday experience. In this article, I propose a theory that looks at wearables “from the inside,”giving a theoretical backdrop to all those wearable designs that pay attention to the internal aspects of interaction. By adopting a postphenomenological approach, I conceptualize wearable devices as “extensions” of our intentionality and introduce the “extension relation” to explain how wearables may alter how we relate to the world. In doing so, I propose a series of design considerations that aim to trace future research lines for all those wearables that are currently designed from an “externalistic” perspective.
... Nevertheless, the purpose of self-monitoring is to increase awareness of the body and one's health behaviour [9]. Studies on individuals who used activity monitors have found that it may improve health management [10,11] and that it strengthens reflections regarding improvement of the self [12]. It was also found that adding activity monitors to interventions for adults with overweight or obesity may increase physical activity [13]. ...
Background
Obesity is a major health concern in western countries. In Norway, patients with obesity can attend weight-loss programmes, which focus on changes in dietary and physical activity habits. Use of self-monitoring is advocated when changing dietary and physical activity habits for adults with obesity. This study aimed to explore the experiences of patients with obesity who used activity monitors while attending a weight-loss programme.
Methods
Patients with body mass index (BMI) > 35 kg/m ² with weight related comorbidities or a BMI > 40 kg/m ² referred to an intermittent weight-loss programme were recruited into this study. They were introduced to one of three different activity monitors, Fitbit Zip™, Mio Fuse™, or Mio Slice™. Semi-structured interviews were performed with patients six months into the weight-loss programme. Thematic analysis was applied when analysing the data.
Results
Of the 29 informants (aged 21 to 66 years) interviewed, 59% were female. Their experience with activity monitors was related to their adherence to the weight-loss programme. Two main themes emerged from the informants stories: 1. “Activity monitors visualize proof of effort or failure to change health habits”. 2. “Activity monitors act as a positive or negative enforcer when incorporating change”.
Conclusions
Using activity monitors either strengthens or undermines patients’ attempts to change health habits when attending a weight-loss program. Our findings suggest a need for more individualized weight-loss programmes for patients with obesity.
... PI systems improve the act of self-monitoring by allowing individuals to track data everywhere at any time, potentially enabling the arising of self-reflection and triggering processes of behaviour change. At the end of the last century, PI systems started to be used by researchers and technology enthusiasts, such as the members of the Quantified Self community (Marcengo and Rapp 2014). ...
Although in recent years the Quantified Self (QS) application domain is growing, there are still some palpable fundamental problems that relegate the QS movement in a phase of low maturity. The first is a technological problem, and specifically, a lack of maturity in technologies for the collection, processing, and data visualization. This is accompanied by a perhaps more fundamental problem of deficit, bias, and lack of integration of aspects concerning the human side of the QS idea. The step that the authors tried to make in this chapter is to highlight aspects that could lead to a more robust approach in QS area. This was done, primarily, through a new approach in data visualization and, secondly, through a necessary management of complexity, both in technological terms and, for what concerns the human side of the whole issue, in theoretical terms. The authors have gone a little further stressing how the future directions of research could lead to significant impacts on both individual and social level.
... According to the Quantified Self Institute, the term "quantified self" embodies self-knowledge through self-tracking. Some common points of QS are data collection, the display of these data, and the cross-referencing of these data to discover possible correlations [16]. Measures about the self can be organic, bodily, behavioral, or environmental [17]. ...
Nowadays, obesity and overweight are a global health epidemic. Traditional interventions for promoting healthy habits do not seem to work. However, emerging technological solutions based on wearables and mobile devices can be useful in promoting healthy habits. These applications generate a considerable amount of tracked activity data. Consequently, our approach is based on the quantified-self model for recommending healthy activities. Gamification can also be used as a mechanism to enhance personalization, increasing user motivation. This paper describes the quantified-self model and its data sources, the activity recommender system, and the PROVITAO APP user experience model. Furthermore, it presented the results of a gamified program applied for three years in children with obesity and the process of evaluating the quantified-self model with experts. Positive outcomes have been obtained in their medical parameters, as well as in their health habits.
... Animations can bring many benefits to data videos. In traditional data visualization, many of the key elements of the stories are not presented, such as characters, a plot, a beginning, and an end (Marcengo and Rapp, 2014). Animations can greatly support visualizing those missing elements, which efficiently enhance the power of data videos. ...
Data videos are a highly impactful method of communication and are becoming a prevalent medium for communicating information. While the majority of current research focuses on the cinematic aspects of data videos, very little is known about the narrative methodologies involved. This paper presents our insights derived from an initial exploration of this area. We present a taxonomy based on the analysis of 70 existing data videos examining their narrative and visual approaches. We propose that our taxonomy can be used to explain the characteristics or design of data videos. Applying this taxonomy, we present our observations, including the trend of popular technologies applied in current data videos, the under-utilization of promising methods, and highlight research opportunities in the field.
... Besides academic research in activity recognition, the recent availability of commercial wearable devices and applications for self-tracking boosted the popularity of PI among a variety of users and for goals other than promoting a healthier lifestyle. Not only the Quantified Selfers ( Marcengo and Rapp 2014), i.e., a class of users extremely engaged in tracking personal data, but also a wider pop- ulation have now access to this kind of instruments (Rapp and Cena 2016). Among these, amateur and elite athletes can find devices aimed at collecting data about specific parameters, as well as more generic information, such as location, number of steps, kilometers travelled. ...
Technological advances in wearable computing are changing the sports domain. A variety of Personal Informatics (PI) tools are starting to provide support and improve athletes’ performance in many sports. In this article, we interviewed 20 amateur and elite athletes of different disciplines, using an array of PI devices, to explore how sports, as well as athletes’ experience, are affected by such instruments. We discovered that amateur athletes present different patterns of usage compared to elite ones. Moreover, we found that elite athletes make sense of their data by exploiting the knowledge they have about their own body and sports practice. We then proposed four considerations for design that we believe should be explored in the future, to reflect on how self-tracking is changing our perspective on sports, and, by and large, on our everyday life.
... Over the last ten years, PI systems have been developed mainly by HCI researchers for therapeutic or behavior change goals, exploiting the reactive effects of self-monitoring, i.e. the phenomenon in which the process of recording behavior causes the behavior to change [66]: from physical activity [14,30] and wellbeing [2], to mental health [55], personal data have been used to promote healthy lifestyle and support patients with chronic diseases. Outside the research domain, selftracking has been a common practice among the quantified selfers for years, a sort of "extreme" user group that tracks for self-experimentation and self-knowledge [54]. ...
World of Warcraft (WoW) may be a source of inspiration to enrich the Personal Informatics systems user's experience and, at the same time, improve gamification design. Through the findings of a four-year reflexive ethnography in WoW, I outline how its game design elements support players in making sense of their own data, emphasizing how "game numbers" are turned into meanings. On the basis of the study results, I propose a series of design considerations to be used in the design of self-tracking systems, which recommend to embody data into digital entities, provide different analytical tools depending on the users' expertise through a flexible model, and foster the formation of "communities of practice" in order to support learning processes.
... PI systems improve the act of self-monitoring by allowing individuals to track data everywhere at any time, potentially enabling the arising of self-reflection and triggering processes of behaviour change. At the end of the last century, PI systems started to be used by researchers and technology enthusiasts, such as the members of the Quantified Self community (Marcengo and Rapp 2014). ...
Thanks to the advancements in ubiquitous and wearable technologies, Personal Informatics (PI) systems can now reach a larger audience of users. However, it is not still clear whether this kind of tool can fit the needs of their daily lives. Our research aims at identifying specific barriers that may prevent the widespread adoption of PI and finding solutions to overcome them. We requested users without competence in self-tracking to use different PI instruments during their daily practices, identifying five user requirements by which to design novel PI tools. On such requirements, we developed a new system that can stimulate the use of these technologies, by enhancing the perceived benefits of collecting personal data. Then, we explored how naïve and experienced users differently explore their personal data in our system through a user trial. Results showed that the system was successful at helping individuals manage and interpret their own data, validated the usefulness of the requirements found and inspired three further design opportunities that could orient the design of future PI systems.
... The so-called Quantified Self (QS) movement first foresaw a future when individuals could manage their own data to raise their self-knowledge. Quantified selfers enact practices of self-experimentation in which data are used to understanding the factors that may influence a (problematic) behavior or condition (e.g., a chronic diseases) [3]. ...
In recent years, we witnessed the spreading of a plethora of wearable and mobile technologies allowing for a continuous and “transparent” gathering of personal data [...]
... Selon Mélanie Swan, l'émergence de ces patterns correspondrait à un « phénomène quantitatif-qualitatif » qui résulte de boucles de rétroaction liées à l'automatisation (Swan, 2013). Le monitoring en continu de ses activités favoriserait ainsi une certaine conscience de soi (Marcengo et Rapp, 2013) permettant un guidage souple dans le changement et la régulation de comportements (Licoppe, 2013). ...
Cette thèse porte sur les pratiques et les usages numériques de quantification de soi. Le mouvement Quantified Self est apparu initialement en 2007 dans la Silicon Valley, mais en quelques années ces pratiques ont rapidement évolué pour converger vers les technologies numériques en santé. S’il ressort de la littérature scientifique et académique qu’elles constituent une forme contemporaine de biopouvoir (Lupton, 2016) et qu’elles sont porteuses de nombreux espoirs dans le domaine de la santé, elles ne sont pourtant pas questionnées, ni du point de vue des mutations anthropologiques qu’elles introduisent dans le couplage entre organisme physiologique et données numériques (Simondon, 1958 ; Boullier, 2011 ; Sadin, 2013), ni du point de vue des modèles de conception sous-jacents aux technologies de quantification de soi, essentiellement fondées sur des approches comportementales, privilégiant la persuasion plutôt que la signification. Ce manque de réflexion soulève de nombreuses questions d’ordre éthique quant à la manière de concevoir des dispositifs numériques, en particulier lorsqu’il s’agit de la santé des individus (Lupton, 2013 ; 2016). Dans cette perspective, cette thèse poursuit un double objectif. Le premier est d’apporter un éclairage compréhensif sur les pratiques numériques de quantification de soi. Le second se rapporte à l’instrumentation de ces nouveaux objets technologiques et à leur modélisation en amont de leur conception. Pour ce faire, nous avons choisi le modèle Learning by expanding d’Engeström (1999, 2014) qui permet d’envisager la conception sous l’angle de la médiation.
... In line with this idea, self-monitoring is a frequently used method in behavior change interventions [2]. One risk of this approach is, however, that selfmonitoring applications do not help people to reach their personal, actual goals (e.g., reducing subjective stress level), but the collection of data itself becomes the goal [3]. Therefore, the reflective stage [4,5] is a crucial one before the intended behavior change can occur [6]. ...
The reflective stage, which is crucial for behavior change, can be facilitated with suitable visualizations that allow users to answer specific questions with regard to their health data. To date, effective visualizations which combine time series data and the appraisal of this data in one chart are, however, rare. To close this gap in research, twenty participants compared two alternative long-term visualizations of health behavior: an accumulated bar chart and a point chart which both include appraisals of the underlying health data based on current recommendations of leading health organizations, such as the World Health Organization or the European Food Information Council. Participants answered three types of question (progress over time, correlations between different health behaviors, and health consciousness). The sequence of visualization for the underlying data sets was cross balanced over participants. The accumulated bar chart resulted in more trials in which participants were unable to answer. In some cases, this type of visualization also resulted in biased interpretations with regard to progress over time and health consciousness. Summarizing, we recommend the point chart, in which the background is colored according to the recommendation of the respective health behavior. Both types of visualization are, however, not optimal for the identification of correlations.
... The Quantified Self (QS) movement, also known as Personal Informatics (PI), has the goal to collect personal data on different aspects of people's daily lives with technological tools [3]. Recently, we have seen increasing complexity in the Quantified Self domain. ...
While the Quantified Self (QS) community is described in terms of "self-knowledge through numbers" people are increasingly demanding value and meaning. In this workshop we aim at refocusing the QS debate on the value of data for providing new services.
... While first PI systems were employed mainly in clinical purposes for supporting patients in self-tracking dysfunctional behaviors or problematic medical conditions, they were then adopted by researchers, technical fanatics, and members of the Quantified Self community. Quantified Selfers use them to discover factors that may influence their behaviors, and are engaged in self-experimentation, i.e. the practice of systematically changing aspects of daily lives in order to discover variables that affect physical parameters, psychological states, and, by and large, aspects of daily life [2,3]. However, thanks to the recent diffusion of wearable devices on the market, we are assisting to the commercialization of a plethora of tools that track a variety of personal information, from steps to sleep, from posture to arousal levels, from heartbeat to blood pressure. ...
Personal Informatics systems collect personal information in order to trigger self-reflection and improve self-knowledge. Users can now choose among different wearable devices for collecting these data according to their needs and desires. These tools exploit not only different shapes and physical forms, but also diverse technologies and algorithms, which may impact the effectiveness of data gathering. In this paper we explored whether there are significant differences in their reported measures and how these can impact the user experience, along with the perceived accuracy of the gathered data and the perceived reliability of the device. To this aim, we carried out an autoethnography which lasted 4 weeks, monitoring the number of steps and the distance covered during the day and the sleep period through different wearables. The results showed that there are wide differences among diverse tools and these differences greatly influence how data collected and devices used are perceived.
In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to identifying new approaches to improve workplace well-being and manage stress with the help of m-health solutions. The primary purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the current use of smartphone applications integrated with wearable technologies in stress management and the promotion of well-being in the workplace. A key terms literature search was performed using multiple electronic databases. The review process followed the international PRISMA statement guidelines. A quality assessment was conducted using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. A total of 25 eligible papers published between 2016 and 2023 were included. Interventions proposed were heterogeneous and primarily based on smartphone applications (72%). 84% of the interventions had background theories, with a high preference for Mindfulness. Interventions were reported as generally significant, and the combined use of smartphone applications and wearable technologies increased awareness at the individual and collective levels. In conclusion, the review demonstrates how the interventions developed through the synergy of technologies can effectively promote well-being and reduce stress in the workplace context, decreasing the stigma still related to mental health and increasing peer support strategies. This work opens the doors to several possibilities for future research. It could be interesting to indagate more in-depth the value of integration between technologies and, eventually, the integration with more traditional type of interventions, e.g., face-to-face activities, evaluating if this synergy can amplify and strengthen the results.
Protocol registration: The review protocol was registered with PROSPERO: CRD42023423126 (May 2nd, 2023).
Social interaction is a crucial part of what it means to be human.
Maintaining a healthy social life is strongly tied to positive outcomes for both physical and mental health. While we use personal informatics data to reflect on many aspects of our lives,
technology-supported reflection for social interactions is currently
under-explored. To address this, we first conducted an online survey (𝑁 =124) to understand how users want to be supported in their
social interactions. Based on this, we designed and developed an
app for users to track and reflect on their social interactions and
deployed it in the wild for two weeks (𝑁 =25). Our results show
that users are interested in tracking meaningful in-person interactions that are currently untraced and that an app can effectively
support self-reflection on social interaction frequency and social
load. We contribute insights and concrete design recommendations
for technology-supported reflection for social interaction.
The article presents the results of an empirical study implemented in a combined strategy in 2020–2021 and aimed at studying digital practices of healthcare of megalopolis residents. One of the focuses of interest was digital self-tracking, namely, the ways users interact with data supplied by personal devices, and the construction of a body image as a result of this process. The analysis of the data obtained allowed us to formulate several conclusions. Thus, for a significant part of active users of digital devices, the generated visual content, expressed in quantitative form, is of significant interest. There is an effect of access to the “real” body as well as the risks of a gap between personal feelings and digital data. The following arguments are put forward in favor of digital information: 1) the gadget can record indicators that are not available at the level of bodily sensations; 2) it generates content in ways that go beyond the capabilities of an individual. When there are significant discrepancies between digital data and subjective experience, as a rule, it is not about their opposition, but about the work of coordinating and “smoothing” information received from various sources. Data visualization forms an idea of the owners of digital devices about their physical condition and progress in achieving their goals. In some cases, the digital body image becomes a reason for communication on social networks and a way of self-presentation. For those who actively practice digital self-tracking, the body image is considered to be incomplete without information expressed in numerical form. Moreover, for feeling corporeality, the experience of vision turns out to be fundamentally significant today.
In this article we present a “methodological assemblage” and technological prototype connecting autoethnography to the practices of self-research in personal science. As an experimental process of personal data gathering, one of the authors used a low-tech device for the active registration of events and their perception, in a case study on disengaging from his smartphone. For the visualization of this data the other author developed a novel treatment of fieldnotes in analytic autoethnography through an open source, interactive notebook. As a proof of concept, we provide a detailed description of the corresponding protocol and prototype, also making available the notebook source code and the quantitative-qualitative open dataset behind its visualization. This highly personalized methodological assemblage represents a technological appropriation that combines self-research and autoethnography—two disciplinary perspectives that share a type of inquiry based on situated knowledge, departing from personal data as empirical basis. Despite recent autoethnographic literature on the phenomenon of self-tracking and the Qualified Self, our contribution addresses a lack of studies in the opposite direction: how the practice of self-research mediated by technology can lead to bridges with digital autoethnography, validating their hybrid combination. After addressing diverse conceptual, ontological and methodological similarities and differences between personal science and autoethnography, we contextualize the case study of digital disengagement and provide a detailed description of the developed self-protocol and the tools used for data gathering.
Scholars have criticised reproductive self-tracking software applications (apps) for reducing embodied experiences to objective quantifications and leading to user self-alienation. Building on scholarly work that underscores the sensory and affective dimension of self-tracking, this ethnographic study explores how users of contraceptive self-tracking apps come to know their bodies during their everyday tracking practices. By relating tracking data to embodied experiences and relating their experiences back to the data, users produce knowledge of their own lived hormonal physiology. Users learn to articulate how their body feels and acts, foregrounding their body as an instrument of knowing alongside technical devices used. Users also articulate how their body is affected by everyday factors such as personal behaviours, diet, sleep and stress, thereby enacting what I call situated health. By foregrounding people's sensory and affective engagements with their data and their bodies through self-tracking, this study contributes to understanding how reproductive self-tracking may be meaningful to users as well as encourages a move beyond the hierarchical opposition between 'objective' numerical data and embodied, lived experiences.
Background:
Remote measurement technologies (RMT) such as mobile health devices and apps are increasingly used by those living with chronic neurological and mental health conditions. RMT enables real-world data collection and regular feedback, providing users with insights about their own conditions. Data visualizations are an integral part of RMT, although little is known about visualization design preferences from the perspectives of those living with chronic conditions.
Objective:
The aim of this review was to explore the experiences and preferences of individuals with chronic neurological and mental health conditions on data visualizations derived from RMT to manage health.
Methods:
In this systematic review, we searched peer-reviewed literature and conference proceedings (PubMed, IEEE Xplore, EMBASE, Web of Science, Association for Computing Machinery Computer-Human Interface proceedings, and the Cochrane Library) for original papers published between January 2007 and September 2021 that reported perspectives on data visualization of people living with chronic neurological and mental health conditions. Two reviewers independently screened each abstract and full-text article, with disagreements resolved through discussion. Studies were critically appraised, and extracted data underwent thematic synthesis.
Results:
We identified 35 eligible publications from 31 studies representing 12 conditions. Coded data coalesced into 3 themes: desire for data visualization, impact of visualizations on condition management, and visualization design considerations. Data visualizations were viewed as an integral part of users' experiences with RMT, impacting satisfaction and engagement. However, user preferences were diverse and often conflicting both between and within conditions.
Conclusions:
When used effectively, data visualizations are valuable, engaging components of RMT. They can provide structure and insight, allowing individuals to manage their own health more effectively. However, visualizations are not "one-size-fits-all," and it is important to engage with potential users during visualization design to understand when, how, and with whom the visualizations will be used to manage health.
The availability of wearable devices recently boosted the popularity of self-tracking technologies. Self-trackers are involved in a complex process of knowledge development, but this cannot be achieved without knowing the body. However, self-tracking devices seem to embrace an abstract and scattered conception of the body, based on unrelated numbers, graphs, and depictions, which may not be integrated into a coherent body image. This may turn into biases and distortions of how we look at our bodies, worsening, rather than improving, our self-knowledge. In this chapter we explore the ways through which the progressive “quantification” introduced by self-tracking technologies is affecting the body. We first explain a series of theoretical constructs concerning the body, which are essential to understand the impact of self-tracking on our bodies, like body schema, body image, and body awareness . Then, we illustrate how individuals’ body image and awareness are affected by the usage of self-tracking technologies in the sports domain. Finally, we point out some lines of future research aimed at providing people with more meaningful representations of their own body, improving their body awareness and even their body image.
This paper addresses the potential of smart wearable and collaborative technologies in support of healthier, safer, and more productive shop floor environments during the present and post– coronavirus 2019 pandemic emerging digital manufacturing worlds. It highlights the urgent need to “digitally transform” many high-touch shop floor operations into low-touch or no-touch ones, aiming not only at a safer but also more productive return to work as well as a healthier continuity of production operations in more socially sustainable working environments. Furthermore, it discusses the interrelated roles of people, data, and technology to develop smart and sustainable shop floor environments. Lastly, it provides relevant recommendations to the key business units in a manufacturing enterprise in regard to the adoption and leverage of smart, wearable, and collaborative technologies on the shop floor in order to ensure the short- and long-term operation of a factory amid the coronavirus 2019 pandemic and the future of production and work in the Industry 4.0 era.
Objectives
Hospitals and medical staff use digital devices such as mobile phones and tablets to treat patients. Prior research has examined patient-reported outcomes, and the use of medical devices to do diagnosis and prognosis of patients, but not whether patients like using, and intend to use in future, mobile devices to self-report medical data. We address this research gap by developing a theoretical model based on the expectancy confirmation model (ECM) and testing it in an empirical study of patients using mobile technology to self-report data.
Design
This study adopts a non-interventional cross-sectional research design. Randomly-selected patients provided data via survey and physical measurements. The target population comprises adults visiting a healthcare laboratory to get their blood drawn.
Materials and Methods
We surveyed 190 randomly-selected patients waiting for treatment in the clinic. They were surveyed at two points in time – before and after their blood was drawn – on their demographic characteristics, research variables concerning their use of mobile devices to provide medical information, and perceived clinical data (blood pressure, height and weight). The research model was tested using structural equation modeling.
Results
The study found strong support for the research model, with seven of eight hypotheses being supported. Both self-disclosure effort and feedback expectation positively affect both perceived feedback quality and confirmation. Contrary to expectations, perceived feedback quality was not found to affect confirmation. Perceived feedback quality, along with confirmation, was found to positively affect satisfaction, which was found to affect intention to disclose medical data through mobile technology.
Conclusions
The study’s findings support the proposed path from feedback expectation and self-disclosure effort to confirmation to satisfaction to disclosure intention. Although perceived feedback does not affect confirmation, it affects satisfaction. Overall, we believe the results provide novel insights to both scientific research community and practitioners about using mobile technologies for self-reporting medical data.
The analysis of human behavior is a popular topic of research since it allows obtaining specific information about individuals, their motivations, and the problems and difficulties they can encounter. Human behavior can be grouped to elaborate profiles that would enable the classification of individuals. Nevertheless, the elaboration of profiles related to human behaviors presents some difficulties associated with the volume of data and the number of parameters typically considered. Thus, the development of software able to automatize the manipulation of data through graphical assistants to produce understandable visualizations of the human behaviors is crucial. In this paper, the VISUVER framework is presented. It uses finite state machines to represent and visualize the dynamic human behavior automatically. This behavior could be provided by real data collected by specific sensors or simulated data. The state machines are built in sequential steps in order to illustrate the dynamic evolution of the behavior over time. VISUVER also includes similarity metrics based on text mining techniques to establish possible profiles among the analyzed behaviors. The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) domain has been considered in order to validate the proposal.
Job absenteeism and health problems are frequently caused by elevated exposure to work-related stress. The public sector is particularly affected by this development. Nevertheless, public sector organizations seem to have issues to reliably detect stress or to discuss about this topic in an objective and factual manner. Data visualizations have been found to be a powerful boundary object for sense-making and for unraveling issues that lie under the surface. Based on a pilot study at a medium-sized municipality in Switzerland, we thus developed, tested, and discussed various alternative visual representations for creating awareness about occupational stress. The results of this study showcase the hidden potential and perils of analyzing physiolytics data on aggregate level.
Quantified-self tools track personal data as well as emotional and psychological scores, in real time, of people who use such tools. Such data have potential uses for initiating interactions to induce personal health-related behavior changes. However, notwithstanding this potential, not much benefit has been derived from the data tracked using various devices such as smartphones and fitness trackers. The main research goal of this study is to investigate how interactions of quantified-self tools should be designed for inducing user perception and behavior change. Particularly, this study uses two message representation formats (MRF) for users to perceive self-tracking tools as companion devices because the MRFs of smartphones and fitness trackers are important to interact with users in conversational interaction. This study developed a message expression algorithm, “Samantha,” to deliver personalized-messages automatically in real time about the values tracked by these devices to their users. The study studied the effect of the four message representation formats on the perception of companion and to induce behavior change.
Prior research on wearable devices has focused heavily on the consumer market. This study makes a unique empirical contribution to wearables research by extending the knowledge on factors that contribute to the adoption of quantified self-tracking wearable devices in an organizational environment. A wearable acceptance model (WAM) and factors that can influence the individual's decision to adopt quantified self-tracking wearable devices and self-monitoring practices were tested with an online survey of 129 university employees (faculty, administration) and students. Partial least squares path modeling was applied in an analysis to test nine hypotheses to validate the WAM. The factors in the individual context i.e. attitude plays a significant mediating role between the intention to use and the other influential factors of technology, implementation and risk context. The factors of the fashnology (wearability, aesthetic/design), individual (attitude) and risk context (privacy concern) tend to have strong and direct effects on the intention to use the devices, whereas factors of risk context (privacy concern) and technology context (performance expectancy) have a moderate influence on the intention to use through attitude. Organizational facilitating conditions have a significant negative influence on the intention to use. Surprisingly, effort expectancy does not have any effect on attitude.
Die persönliche Datenerfassung durch tragbare Technologien hat in den letzten Jahren stetig an Bedeutung gewonnen. Mit dem Ziel der Selbstoptimierung sammeln Anhänger der Quantified Self-Bewegung Daten über die eigene Person. Erfasst werden zum Beispiel Informationen zu sportlichen Aktivitäten, dem Schlafverhalten oder dem Gesundheitszustand. Begünstigt durch die technische Entwicklung werden die für die Erfassung notwendigen Sensoren immer kleiner und leistungsfähiger. Durch Smartphone-Apps und neue Produkte, wie Fitness-Tracker und Smartwatches, kommen immer mehr Menschen mit der digitalen Selbstvermessung in Kontakt. Ein besonderes Potenzial für diese neuen Self-Tracking Technologien wird dabei im Fitness- und Gesundheitsbereich gesehen. So bieten bereits einige Krankenversicherungen Quantified Self-orientierte Bonusprogramme an. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, mehr über die Konsumentenakzeptanz von Quantified Self-Produkten zu erfahren, um darauf aufbauend ein Modell zu entwickeln, welches die Akzeptanz beschreibt. Die Grundlage bildet das Technology Acceptance Model von Davis (1986), das durch die Erkenntnisse eines projektiven Verfahrens und einer Literaturrecherche um zusätzliche Determinanten erweitert wurde. Es wird angenommen, dass folgende Faktoren die Akzeptanz beeinflussen: Wahrgenommene Nützlichkeit, wahrgenommene leichte Bedienbarkeit, Persönliche Innovationsfreude, wahrgenommenes Vergnügen, wahrgenommene Ästhetik, wahrgenommene Qualität der Auswertung, wahrgenommene Unterstützung der Selbstwirksamkeit, Misstrauen, sozialer Einfluss und Brand Attachement. Das erweiterte Technology Acceptance Model und die abgeleiteten Hypothesen sind dabei in zukünftigen Forschungen zu überprüfen.
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English version:
Personal data collection with the help of mobile technologies has become increasingly important in recent years. Those following the Quantified Self Movement aim to gather data about themselves, such as sports activities, sleeping behavior or their personal health status. Benefiting from the technical development, the sensors responsible for acquiring data are becoming smaller and more powerful. In addition, more and more people come into contact with self-tracking, either through smartphone apps or new products such as fitness trackers and smart watches. Relevance of these new self-tracking technologies is expected particularly in the fitness and healthcare field. Some health insurance companies are already offering Quantified Self-oriented bonus programs. The purpose of this study is to learn more about consumer acceptance of Quantified Self products. The Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1986) served as the theoretical basis and has been extended by the results of a projective method and a literature research. It is assumed that the following factors influence the acceptance: Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, personal innovativeness, perceived Enjoyment, perceived aesthetics, perceived quality of the evaluation, perceived support of self-efficacy, mistrust, social influences and brand attachment. The expanded Technology Acceptance Model and the derived hypotheses need to be verified in further research.
Personal health data is acquired, processed, stored, and accessed using a variety of different devices, applications, and services. These are often complex and highly connected. Therefore, use or misuse of the data is hard to detect for people, if they are not capable to understand the trace (i.e., the provenance) of that data. We present a visualization technique for personal health data provenance using comic strips. Each strip of the comic represents a certain activity, such as entering data using a smartphone application, storing or retrieving data on a cloud service, or generating a diagram from the data. The comic strips are generated automatically using recorded provenance graphs. The easy-to-understand comics enable all people to notice crucial points regarding their data such as, for example, privacy violations.
In recent years, User Modeling (UM) scenery is changing. With the recent advancements in wearable and mobile technologies, the amount and type of data that can be gathered about users and employed to build User Models is rapidly expanding. UM can now be enriched with data regarding different aspects of people's daily lives and is likely to deliver novel personalized services. All these changes bring forth new research questions about the kinds of services which could be improved, which of them would be the most useful, the ways of conveying effectively new forms of recommendations, and how users would perceive them. In this paper the authors tried to find answers to some of these questions by exploiting a novel personalized system to conduct a qualitative user study, with the aim to understand users' needs and expectations w.r.t. personalization enabled by the presence of wearable and mobile technologies.
Personal health data is acquired, processed, stored, and accessed using a variety of different devices, apps, and services. These are often complex and highly connected. Therefore, privacy violations and other use or misuse of the data are hard to detect for many people, because they are not able to understand the trace (i.e., the provenance) of that data. We present a visualization technique for personal health data provenance using comics strips. Each strip of the comic represents a certain activity, such as entering data using an app, storing or retrieving data on a cloud service, or generating a diagram from the data. The comic strips are generated automatically using recorded provenance graphs. The easy-to-understand comics enable all people to realize crucial points regarding their data.
This paper contributes a participatory design case study that used workshops and ideation frameworks to scaffold a conceptualisation of "user data-actuated" plants. The framework combines ideation cards, worksheets and facilitated co-design, guiding non-experts to conceptually connect personal data, health/wellbeing goals, plants and people. We demonstrate how the framework enabled participants to envisage "connected" plants, linking personal data outputs with inputs to actuated growing environments, creating biofeedback. From the results of design work carried out by participants, we synthesise and present four themes. The themes provide a spectrum of values that participants embedded in their connected plants, and in the act of gifting their connected plants to other people. The results of these workshops sign-post a new design space for personal data embodied in plants that could be taken forward by the DIS community.
The rapid advancement of wearable devices and smartphones, allowed practitioners and specialists to keep track of physical, biological and behavioral activities. Nowadays, this self tracking, a.k.a. quantified self (QS), is widely used in big data science due to the large volume of data being generated from these devices. The wearable devices that are being used today for self-tracking can collect enormous amounts of data for an individual from only one activity such as collecting the heart rates for an individual; it generates around 9 gigabytes of data per person per month. The collected data from an individual or from a group might lead to extraordinary advancement in vast scientific fields if it has been collected, organized, and analysed in a proper manner. Examples of the advantages include, but not limited to, helping to improve health of targeted individuals, predicting future incidents or events, helping decision makers in governments and organizations in taking the right decisions at the right time according to data collected and analyzed from crows, that is to name a few. In this paper, we analyze existing approaches of utilizing and handling QS as big data, and the state of the art mining approaches in this emerging domain comparing two primary findings from previous studies and how it impacts individual’s health, especially among adults who suffer from obesity and diabetes. We also did and analyze a survey among self-trackers in Saudi Arabia to have an understating of the QS movement in the country and how it can be improved for healthcare purposes.
This paper tackles an important issue of how to use semantic web technologies for Quantified Self (QS). Ontologies offer a great opportunity for data integration and reasoning over data in a QS environment.
We present some of the methods for quantifying mobile phone usage used in the Menthal app. We show that single numbers work for promoting an idea but more complex vi-sualizations retain users. The Menthal app works as a digital scale and keeps the user updated with his current usage habits. In particular we describe the MScore, a simple way of quantifying mobile phone usage by a single number. By displaying it as a notification, we are reminding the users of their potential phone overuse. We present information in a simple way, allowing user to dig deeper into different aspects of their behaviour through a dashboard. Additionally , we show our methods for correlating multiple measurements in an attractive way.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the US, and yet most cases represent localized cancer for which the optimal treatment is unclear. Accumulating evidence suggests that the available treatment options, including surgery and conservative treatment, result in a similar prognosis for most men with localized prostate cancer. However, approximately 90% of patients choose surgery over conservative treatment, despite the risk of severe side effects like erectile dysfunction and incontinence. Recent medical research suggests that a key reason is the lack of patient-centered tools that can effectively communicate personalized risk information and enable them to make better health decisions. In this paper, we report the iterative design process and results of developing the PROgnosis Assessment for Conservative Treatment (PROACT) tool, a personalized health risk communication tool for localized prostate cancer patients. PROACT utilizes two published clinical prediction models to communicate the patients' personalized risk estimates and compare treatment options. In collaboration with the Maine Medical Center, we conducted two rounds of evaluations with prostate cancer survivors and urologists to identify the design elements and narrative structure that effectively facilitate patient comprehension under emotional distress. Our results indicate that visualization can be an effective means to communicate complex risk information to patients with low numeracy and visual literacy. However, the visualizations need to be carefully chosen to balance readability with ease of comprehension. In addition, due to patients' charged emotional state, an intuitive narrative structure that considers the patients' information need is critical to aid the patients' comprehension of their risk information.
The January 2001 Communications article “A Personal Digital Store” described our efforts to encode, store, andallow easy access to all of a person’s information for personal and professional use [1]. The goals included understanding the effort to digitize a lifetime of legacy content and the elimination of paper as a permanent storage medium. We used Gordon Bell’s document archive as well as his current activities as a vehicle for this research. It was presumed that an emerging terabyte disk would hold a lifetime of accumulated information of a moderately active professional person. This article describes the project’s progress, insights, and surprises over the last fiveyears. From the original plan of simply storing files of scanned papers, we evolved a concept of what the PC of the future should look like as we developed the SQLbased MyLifeBits platform.
Smart phones are conquering the mobile phone market; they are not just phones they also act as media players, gaming consoles, personal calendars, storage, etc. They are portable computers with fewer computing capabilities than personal computers. However unlike personal computers users can carry their smartphone with them at all times. The ubiquity of mobile phones and their computing capabilities provide an opportunity of using them as a life logging device. Life-logs (personal e-memories) are used to record users' daily life events and assist them in memory augmentation. In a more technical sense, life-logs sense and store users' contextual information from their environment through sensors, which are core components of life-logs. Spatio-temporal aggregation of sensor information can be mapped to users' life events. We propose UbiqLog, a lightweight, configurable and extendable life-log framework that uses mobile phone as a device for life logging. The proposed framework extends pre-2 vious research in this field, which investigated mobile phones as life-log tool through continuous sensing. Its openness in terms of sensor configuration allows developers to create flexible, multipurpose life-log tools. In addition to that this framework contains a data model and an architecture, which can be used as reference model for further life-log development, including its extension to other devices, such as ebook readers, T.V.s, etc.
Self-tracking wearable devices are capable of tracking calorie consumption and inferring physical activity physical activity to support self-awareness and healthy behavior. These devices automatically capture human behavior (such as walking) but do not typically make the user aware detected unhealthy behaviors. Furthermore, these devices cannot intervene in the moment to make users aware they are engaging in unhealthy behavior (such as sitting for a long period of time) and persuade them to correct these unhealthy behaviors (e.g., by taking a break to go for a walk). There is an increasing trend for people with low physical activity occupations to sit for long periods of time, yet research suggests that lengthy sitting, independent of overall physical activity level, increases the risk of weight gain and mortality [1]. We aim to decrease the duration of sedentary bouts in the workplace by detecting when people have been inactive for a long time and then prompting them take a short break from their desks. In this poster we present the design of Fitbit+, a system that realizes this strategy by leveraging Fitbit's near real-time, automated step logging to detect sedentary behavior and then prompt users to take short breaks.
Lifelogging is a technically inspired approach that attempts to address the problem of human forgetting by developing systems that “record everything.” Uptake of lifelogging systems has generally been disappointing, however. One reason for this lack of uptake is the absence of design principles for developing digital systems to support memory. Synthesizing multiple studies, we identify and evaluate 4 new empirically motivated design principles for lifelogging: Selectivity, Embodiment, Synergy, and Reminiscence. We first summarize four empirical studies that motivate the principles, then describe the evaluation of four novel systems built to embody these principles. We show that design principles were generative, leading to the development of new classes of lifelogging system, as well as providing strategic guidance about how those systems should be built. Evaluations suggest support for Selection and Embodiment principles, but more conceptual and technical work is needed to refine the Synergy and Reminiscence principles.
New systems may allow people to record everything they see and hear—and even things they cannot sense—and to store all these data in a personal digital archive
Continued advances in display hardware, computing power, networking, and rendering algorithms have all converged to dramatically improve large high-resolution display capabilities. We present a survey on prior research with large high-resolution displays. In the hardware configurations section we examine systems including multi-monitor workstations, reconfigurable projector arrays, and others. Rendering and the data pipeline are addressed with an overview of current technologies. We discuss many applications for large high-resolution displays such as automotive design, scientific visualization, control centers, and others. Quantifying the effects of large high-resolution displays on human performance and other aspects is important as we look toward future advances in display technology and how it is applied in different situations. Interacting with these displays brings a different set of challenges for HCI professionals, so an overview of some of this work is provided. Finally, we present our view of the top ten greatest challenges in large highresolution displays.
One of the more compelling beliefs about vision is that it i s based on representations that are coherent and complete, with everything in the visual field described in great detail. However, changes made during a visual disturbance are found to be difficult to see, arguing against the idea that our brains contain a detailed, picture-like representation of the scene. Instead, it is argued here that a more dynamic, "just-in-time" representation is involved, one with deep similarities to the way that users interact with external displays. It is further argued that these similarities can provide a basis for the design of intelligent display systems that can interact with humans in highly effective and novel ways.
Users who operate in the field (e.g., maintenance personnel, geologists, archaeologists, tourists, first responders) bring often with them paper sheets (e.g., city maps, forms, technical plans, object descriptions) containing data needed for their activities. Even when this data is available in digital form, the ...
The aim of this review paper is to summarize recent developments in the field of wearable sensors and systems that are relevant to the field of rehabilitation. The growing body of work focused on the application of wearable technology to monitor older adults and subjects with chronic conditions in the home and community settings justifies the emphasis of this review paper on summarizing clinical applications of wearable technology currently undergoing assessment rather than describing the development of new wearable sensors and systems. A short description of key enabling technologies (i.e. sensor technology, communication technology, and data analysis techniques) that have allowed researchers to implement wearable systems is followed by a detailed description of major areas of application of wearable technology. Applications described in this review paper include those that focus on health and wellness, safety, home rehabilitation, assessment of treatment efficacy, and early detection of disorders. The integration of wearable and ambient sensors is discussed in the context of achieving home monitoring of older adults and subjects with chronic conditions. Future work required to advance the field toward clinical deployment of wearable sensors and systems is discussed.
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has deployed a 43- megapixel multi-panel immersive environment, La Cueva Grande (LCG), to be used in visualizing the terabytes of data produced by simulations. This paper briefly discusses some of the technical challenges encountered and overcome during the deployment of a 43-million pixel immersive visualization environment.
Personal, mobile displays, such as those on mobile phones, are ubiquitous, yet for the most part, underutilized. We present results from a field experiment that investigated the effectiveness of these displays as a means for improving awareness of daily life (in our case, self-monitoring of physical activity). Twenty-eight participants in three experimental conditions used our UbiFit system for a period of three months in their day-to-day lives over the winter holiday season. Our results show, for example, that participants who had an awareness display were able to maintain their physical activity level (even during the holidays), while the level of physical activity for participants who did not have an awareness display dropped significantly. We discuss our results and their general implications for the use of everyday mobile devices as awareness displays.
Large high-resolution displays combine the images of multiple smaller display devices to form one large display area. A total resolution that can easily comprise several hundred megapixels makes them suited for the visualization of data sets that could not be perceived entirely on desktop PCs or laptops due to their size. At the same time, user collaboration benefits from an extended screen area that facilitates interaction with screen contents as well as interaction among users. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of large high-resolution displays and examines ways to set up display clusters both in terms of hardware and underlying software technology. Furthermore, it investigates how to effectively harness the computational power and resources of rendering clusters to visualize giga-scale data sets. Last but not least, traditional interaction metaphors and their scalability to large displays as well as the effect of new techniques on the user experience are discussed.
This paper describes the CAVE (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment) virtual reality/scientific visualization system in detail and demonstrates that projection technology applied to virtual-reality goals achieves a system that matches the quality of workstation screens in terms of resolution, color, and flicker-free stereo. In addition, this format helps reduce the effect of common tracking and system latency errors. The off-axis perspective projection techniques we use are shown to be simple and straightforward. Our techniques for doing multi-screen stereo vision are enumerated, and design barriers, past and current, are described. Advantages and disadvantages of the projection paradigm are discussed, with an analysis of the effect of tracking noise and delay on the user. Successive refinement, a necessary tool for scientific visualization, is developed in the virtual reality context. The use of the CAVE as a one-to-many presentation device at SIGGRAPH '92 and Supercomputing '92 for computational science data is also mentioned.
Plastic electronics is an enabling technology for obtaining active (transistor based) electronic circuits on flexible and/or nonplanar surfaces. For these reasons, it appears as a perfect candidate to promote future developments of wearable electronics toward the concept of fabrics and garments made by functional (in this case, active electronic) yarns. In this paper, a panoramic view of recent achievements and future perspectives is given.
Rather than try to capture everything, system design should focus on the psychological basis of human memory.
The article presents review of the Display Week 2012, focusing on innovations in the LCD industry. One of the most significant was presented from the start at the Business Conference hosted by IMS Research the day before the exhibition opened. Several speakers made reference to the fact that LCD suppliers on the whole have lost money for the prior consecutive seven quarters. The industry is also facing competition from new technologies on a scale that has not been seen since flat panels started to replace CRTs in many applications. OLEDs are clearly a major challenger; two 55-inch HDTV demonstrations in the exhibit hall drew admiring crowds throughout the week, and OLED technology already has made significant inroads in the mobile-device market. At Display Week, Sharp and Semiconductor Energy Laboratory announced that they have used IGZO to create mobile LCD panels with a resolution of 500 pixels per inch (ppi).
Delete looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we've searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all.InDelete, Viktor Mayer-Sch nberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget--the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Sch nberger examines the technology that's facilitating the end of forgetting--digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software--and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it's outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won't let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can't help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution--expiration dates on information--that may.Deleteis an eye-opening book that will help us remember how to forget in the digital age.
Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.
In this paper we discuss the efficacy of storytelling for information visualization. We posit that computer technology provides us with new media and modalities that can now be used to convey information in a story- like fashion. This paper is based on work of Thomas, Gershon and Ward.
Total Recall is a system that records an individual perspective of the world using personal sensors such as a microphone in a pair of glasses or a camera in a necklace. There are many applications of Total Recall -- patients accurately recording what they've recently eaten, students replaying any part of a class, and so on--that can significantly improve people's quality of life. However, data recorded by such a system may be also used by the judicial system without the consent of the user or of those being recorded. Pervasive use of systems like Total Recall will likely change our social structure as memory becomes vastly more reliable and complete. It is natural then that privacy advocates might consider such technology dangerous because such data can be used in unanticipated ways by government agencies or third-party civil litigants. In this paper, we discuss privacy concerns in the context of systems like Total Recall and propose a solution that may alleviate some of these concerns. We discuss the ramifications of this solution and its possible implementations.
Skinner outlines a science of behavior which generates its own laws through an analysis of its own data rather than securing them by reference to a conceptual neural process. "It is toward the reduction of seemingly diverse processes to simple laws that a science of behavior naturally directs itself. At the present time I know of no simplification of behavior that can be claimed for a neurological fact. Increasingly greater simplicity is being achieved, but through a systematic treatment of behavior at its own level." The results of behavior studies set problems for neurology, and in some cases constitute the sole factual basis for neurological constructs. The system developed in the present book is objective and descriptive. Behavior is regarded as either respondent or operant. Respondent behavior is elicited by observable stimuli, and classical conditioning has utilized this type of response. In the case of operant behavior no correlated stimulus can be detected when the behavior occurs. The factual part of the book deals largely with this behavior as studied by the author in extensive researches on the feeding responses of rats. The conditioning of such responses is compared with the stimulus conditioning of Pavlov. Particular emphasis is placed on the concept of "reflex reserve," a process which is built up during conditioning and exhausted during extinction, and on the concept of reflex strength. The chapter headings are as follows: a system of behavior; scope and method; conditioning and extinction; discrimination of a stimulus; some functions of stimuli; temporal discrimination of the stimulus; the differentiation of a response; drive; drive and conditioning; other variables affecting reflex strength; behavior and the nervous system; and conclusion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
I begin with the argument that continuous archival of per-sonal experience requires certain criteria to be met. In par-ticular, for continuous usage, it is essential that each ray of light entering the eye be collinear with a correspond-ing ray of light entering the device, in at least one mode of operation. This is called the EyeTap criterion, and de-vices meeting this criterion are called EyeTap devices. Sec-ondly, I outline Mediated Reality as a necessary framework for continuous archival and retrieval of personal experience. Thirdly, I show some examples of personalized experience capture (i.e. visual art). Finally, I outline the social issues of such devices, in particular, the accidentally discovered in-verse to surveillance that I call "sosuveillance". It is argued that an equilibrium between surveillance and sousveillance is implicit in the archival of personal experiences.
This paper presents a novel ubiquitous computing device, the SenseCam, a sensor augmented wearable stills camera. SenseCam
is designed to capture a digital record of the wearer’s day, by recording a series of images and capturing a log of sensor
data. We believe that reviewing this information will help the wearer recollect aspects of earlier experiences that have subsequently
been forgotten, and thereby form a powerful retrospective memory aid. In this paper we review existing work on memory aids
and conclude that there is scope for an improved device. We then report on the design of SenseCam in some detail for the first
time. We explain the details of a first in-depth user study of this device, a 12-month clinical trial with a patient suffering
from amnesia. The results of this initial evaluation are extremely promising; periodic review of images of events recorded
by SenseCam results in significant recall of those events by the patient, which was previously impossible. We end the paper
with a discussion of future work, including the application of SenseCam to a wider audience, such as those with neurodegenerative
conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Research on ontology is becoming increasingly widespread in the computer science community, and its importance is being recognized in a multiplicity of research fields and application areas, including knowledge engineering, database design and integration, information retrieval and extraction. We shall use the generic term "information systems", in its broadest sense, to collectively refer to these application perspectives. We argue in this paper that so-called ontologies present their own methodological and architectural peculiarities: on the methodological side, their main peculiarity is the adoption of a highly interdisciplinary approach, while on the architectural side the most interesting aspect is the centrality of the role they can play in an information system, leading to the perspective of ontology-driven information systems.
The question of a theory of analytic change is approached through a consideration of analytic impasse. Impasse is considered in relation to impasse in the analyst, linked to an impasse in some forms of mourning in the analyst. The analyst's impasse is considered in the light of character formation, the relation of analytic vocations to early attachment, and object ties in the analyst leading to problems with omnipotence. Impasse then is tied to various processes and defenses that shape and contribute to the analyst's countertransference. Analytic change is considered then in the context of theories of nonlinear development, models of speech practice, and mutative action. These ideas are explored through case material.
Visualization has a relevant role in almost every domain of computer applications. It is thus natural to think about bringing visualization techniques to mobile devices (such as PDAs and mobile phones) to harness the power of visualization anytime, anywhere. Unfortunately, limitations of mobile devices make it impossible to follow a trivial porting approach from desktop computers. A considerable research effort is needed to understand how to design effective visualizations for mobile devices. This paper deals with the different aspects of visualizing information on mobile devices. We first discuss in detail the peculiarities of the mobile visualization context that motivate research needs. Then, we summarize the different steps of mobile visualization design. We provide concrete examples from a mobile application we have recently developed and also present a taxonomy of the different classes of visualizations that are being investigated in the mobile context.
The article reports that visualisation allows to reveal information as accurately as if the viewer is watching a movie. A well-told story conveys great quantities of information in relatively few words in a format that is easily assimilated by the listener or viewer. Stories are just also more compelling. Images hold a considerable amount of information a viewer might grasp quickly. But images are prone to uncertainties and might require some clarification. Transforming the representation from text narrative to visual domain requires adding more information to the presentation. Information visualization is a process that transforms data, information, and knowledge into a form that relies on the human visual system. The user/viewer of the visualization needs to integrate the information streams, thoroughly understand them, and make decisions based on their information in a timely fashion. Information visualization combines aspects of imaging, graphics, scientific visualisation, and human computer and human-information interactions, as well as information technology. The flood of complex information moving into industrial and military command centers needs to be analyzed. In creating a better and more appealing representation, the designer who created visualizations in the figure tried to make the transition between disparate pieces of information appear more continuous. INSET: Discovering Visual Metaphors.