Fostering Engagement with Personal Informatics Systems

Gulotta, Rebecca; Forlizzi, Jodi; Yang, Rayoung; Newman, Mark

doi:10.1145/2901790.2901803

Cited by 57 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…This finding is consistent with literature on personal informatics and eco-feedback, where engagement with situated systems has also been found to decline over time or transition to less frequent forms [14,15,29,33]. Additionally, we found that polite and amiable negotiations around adjustments of windows, radiators or desk fans did not necessarily equate to satisfaction with thermal comfort.…”

Section: Discussion: Towards a Smarter Thermostatsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Encouraging adaptation in this way holds the potential to broaden office occupants' understandings and expectations of comfort beyond ubiquitous mechanical intervention [4]. Pragmatically, a Smarter Thermostat is not affected by the likely decline in user engagement over time attributed to other situated interfaces [14,15,29,33], but it still provides users with the ability to log their thermal (dis)comfort, should they become dissatisfied with it. This simply means maintaining an interface for human input as we did throughout our deployments, such that the system may continue to respond to changes in occupancy, such as employee turn-over or visitors with different thermal comfort preferences.…”

Section: Leveraging the Digital Complaints Box: Equipped To Handle DImentioning

confidence: 99%

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Snow

Auffenberg

schraefel

2017

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Smart thermostats offer impressive scope for adapting to users' thermal comfort preferences and saving energy in shared work environments. Yet human interactions with smart thermostats thus far amount to an assumption from designers that users are willing and able to provide unbiased data at regular intervals; which may be unrealistic. In this paper we highlight the variety of social factors which complicate users' relationships with smart thermostats in shared work environments. These include social dynamics, expectations, and contextually specific factors that influence motivations for interaction with the system. In response we outline our framework towards a Smarter Thermostat: one which better accounts for these messy social inevitabilities, is equipped for a decline in user feedback over time and one which augments rather than attempts to replaces human intelligence-thereby ensuring a smarter thermostat does not create dumber humans.

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Section: Discussion: Towards a Smarter Thermostatsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Leveraging the Digital Complaints Box: Equipped To Handle DImentioning

confidence: 99%

Log it While it's Hot

Snow

Auffenberg

schraefel

2017

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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“…Notably, some people stop using self-tracking technologies after having gained new insights or developed new routines [17], and a few people lapse and resume self-tracking because of shifting life priorities [22,38,53]. Considering these circumstances and limitations of current personal informatics tools, recent research has highlighted the importance of supporting personalisation [29], customisation [30], and flexibility [10,36].…”

Section: Self-tracking With Personal Informatics Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible and Mindful Self-Tracking

Ayobi

Sonne

Marshall

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms ABSTRACTDigital self-tracking technologies offer many potential benefits over self-tracking with paper notebooks. However, they are often too rigid to support people's practical and emotional needs in everyday settings. To inform the design of more flexible self-tracking tools, we examine bullet journaling: an analogue and customisable approach for logging and reflecting on everyday life. Analysing a corpus of paper bullet journal photos and related conversations on Instagram, we found that individuals extended and adapted bullet journaling systems to their changing practical and emotional needs through: (1) creating and combining personally meaningful visualisations of different types of trackers, such as habit, mood, and symptom trackers; (2) engaging in mindful reflective thinking through design practices and self-reflective strategies; and (3) posting photos of paper journals online to become part of a selftracking culture of sharing and learning. We outline two interrelated design directions for flexible and mindful selftracking: digitally extending analogue self-tracking and supporting digital self-tracking as a mindful design practice.

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“…With the proliferation of ubiquitous and personal tools, technologies increasingly operate concurrently, so accounts of isolated effects can gloss over the heterogeneous nature of the computational environment wherein users interact with multiple devices and interfaces. For example, previous research indicates that a large number of users abandon wearable activity trackers after a short period of time [e.g., 6,21,22,23]; this type of analysis may not necessarily consider the ecology of fitness tools that the user puts together and draws upon; abandoning a wearable tracker does not necessarily imply that these users lose interest in using digital tools for tracking fitness and physical activities; several of our participants stopped using an activity tracker once they found a more effective alternative (e.g., mobile application). P27 found Fitbit irrelevant since he had very structured exercise routines, and he did not pay much attention to Fitbit's frequent goal notifications (as one of its primary gratification mechanism): "I decided I wanted to be in shape and so I run at least like three times a week.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activity Trackers, Relational Affordances, and Device Ecologies of Fitness Technologies (Preprint)

Jarrahi¹

2018

Preprint

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BACKGROUND With the proliferation of activity-tracking devices and other smart tools, more users leverage these technologies to track their physical and fitness-related activities. The research on the benefits (and limitations) of these devices tends to focus on the use of a single tool, leaving out the interactions among multiple technologies, and how these interactions influence the way users perceive affordances of activity trackers. OBJECTIVE The research on the benefits (and limitations) of fitness tacking devices to date tends to focus on the use of a single tool, leaving out the interactions among multiple technologies. Building from an ecological perspective, this work extend the research on activity-tracking devices by providing insight into the relationships among activity tracking devices and other fitness-related technologies within the device ecology of technologies around the user. METHODS This exploratory, qualitative study is based on 29 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with users of Fitbit fitness tracking devices. RESULTS Analysis of the interviews revealed competitive and complementary interactions among various fitness tracking devices, and explained how these interactions influenced the way users perceived affordances of fitness trackers in a device ecology. CONCLUSIONS The affordances of fitness devices are not enacted in isolation but are relational to those of other technological options and differing personal preferences and goals of the user.

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Fostering Engagement with Personal Informatics Systems

Cited by 57 publications

References 76 publications

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Flexible and Mindful Self-Tracking

Activity Trackers, Relational Affordances, and Device Ecologies of Fitness Technologies (Preprint)

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