Finding the Inner Clock: A Chronobiology-based Calendar
This addresses time management and wellbeing issues for individuals, but it is incremental as it applies existing chronobiological knowledge to a new calendar tool.
The paper tackled the problem of time stress and neglect of natural biological rhythms by developing a calendar application based on chronobiology to support planning activities, with participants finding it engaging and helpful for balancing external demands with personal health and wellbeing.
Time and its lack of play a central role in our everyday lives. Despite increasing productivity, many people experience time stress, exhaustion and a longing for time affluence, and at the same time, a fear of not being busy enough. All this leads to a neglect of natural time, especially the patterns and rhythms created by physiological processes, subsumed under the heading of chronobiology. The present paper presents and evaluates a calendar application, which uses chronobiological knowledge to support people s planning activities. Participants found our calendar to be interesting and engaging. It especially made them think more about their bodies and appropriate times for particular activities. All in all, it supported participants in negotiating. external demands and personal health and wellbeing. This shows that technology does not necessarily has to be neutral or even further current (mal-)practices. Our calendar cares about changing perspectives and thus about enhancing users wellbeing.