A Field Study of On-Calendar Visualizations
This work addresses the problem of improving personal data interpretation for health and well-being, though it is incremental as it builds on existing feedback tools and technology adoption models.
The study tackled the challenge of making personal feedback data more accessible and comprehensible by integrating it into digital calendars, finding that this approach helped users quickly identify patterns and anomalies in their data over an eight-week field study.
Feedback tools help people to monitor information about themselves to improve their health, sustainability practices, or personal well-being. Yet reasoning about personal data (e.g., pedometer counts, blood pressure readings, or home electricity consumption) to gain a deep understanding of your current practices and how to change can be challenging with the data alone. We integrate quantitative feedback data within a personal digital calendar; this approach aims to make the feedback data readily accessible and more comprehensible. We report on an eight-week field study of an on-calendar visualization tool. Results showed that a personal calendar can provide rich context for people to reason about their feedback data. The on-calendar visualization enabled people to quickly identify and reason about regular patterns and anomalies. Based on our results, we also derived a model of the behavior feedback process that extends existing technology adoption models. With that, we reflected on potential barriers for the ongoing use of feedback tools.