Ian Li

A stage-based model of personal informatics systems

People strive to obtain self-knowledge. A class of systems called personal informatics is appearing that help people collect and reflect on personal information. However, there is no comprehensive list of problems that users experience using these systems, and no guidance for making these systems more effective. To address this, we conducted surveys and interviews with people who collect and reflect on personal information. We derived a stage-based model of personal informatics systems composed of five stages (preparation, collection, integration, reflection, and action) and identified barriers in each of the stages. These stages have four essential properties: barriers cascade to later stages; they are iterative; they are user-driven and/or system-driven; and they are uni-faceted or multi-faceted. From these properties, we recommend that personal informatics systems should 1) be designed in a holistic manner across the stages; 2) allow iteration between stages; 3) apply an appropriate balance of automated technology and user control within each stage to facilitate the user experience; and 4) explore support for associating multiple facets of peoples lives to enrich the value of systems.

Using context to reveal factors that affect physical activity

There are many physical activity awareness systems available in todays market. These systems show physical activity information (e.g., step counts, energy expenditure, heart rate) which is sufficient for many self-knowledge needs, but information about the factors that affect physical activity may be needed for deeper self-reflection and increased self-knowledge. We explored the use of contextual information, such as events, places, and people, to support reflection on the factors that affect physical activity. We present three findings from our studies. First, users make associations between physical activity and contextual information that help them become aware of factors that affect their physical activity. Second, reflecting on physical activity and context can increase peoples awareness of opportunities for physical activity. Lastly, automated tracking of physical activity and contextual information benefits long-term reflection, but may have detrimental effects on immediate awareness.

Using visualizations to increase compliance in experience sampling

Experience sampling method (or ESM) is a common data collection method to understand user behavior and to evaluate ubiquitous computing technologies. However, ESM studies often demand too much time and commitment from participants, which leads to attrition and low compliance among participants. We introduce a new approach called experience sampling with feedback or ES+feedback that improves compliance by giving feedback to participants through various visualizations. Providing feedback to users makes the information personally relevant and increases the value of the study to participants, which increases their compliance. Our exploratory study shows that ES+feedback increases the compliance rate by 23%.

Personal informatics in practice: improving quality of life through data

Personal informatics refers to a class of software and hardware systems that help individuals collect personal information to improve self-understanding. Improving self-understanding can foster self-insight and promote positive behaviors: healthy living, energy conservation, etc. The development of personal informatics applications poses new challenges for human-computer interaction and creates opportunities for applications in various domains related to quality of life, such as fitness, nutrition, wellness, mental health, and sustainability. This workshop will continue the conversations from the CHI 2010 and CHI 2011 workshops on personal informatics [6][7]. The focal themes for this workshop are: (1) practical lessons from previous research and development experiences that can guide interface design for systems that allow users to collect and reflect on personal data; (2) requirements for building robust personal informatics applications; and (3) design and development of infrastructures that make personal informatics applications easier to create and evaluate.

Know thyself: monitoring and reflecting on facets of one's life

People strive to gain better knowledge of themselves by collecting information about their behaviors, habits, and thoughts. Personal informatics systems can help by facilitating the collection of personal information and the reflection on that information. These systems satisfy peoples innate curiosity about themselves and encourage holistic engagement with ones life. Development of such systems poses new challenges in human-computer interaction and opens opportunities for new applications and collaborations between diverse disciplines, such as design, life-logging, ubiquitous computing, persuasive technologies, and information visualization.

Personal informatics and HCI: design, theory, and social implications

Personal informatics is a class of systems that help people collect personal information to improve self-knowledge. The development of personal informatics applications poses new challenges in human-computer interaction and creates opportunities for collaboration between diverse disciplines, including design, ubiquitous computing, persuasive technology and information visualization. This workshop will continue the conversation from the CHI 2010 workshop and extend the discussion of personal informatics to include behavioral theories that can guide the development of such systems, as well as the social implications of self-tracking.

Personal informatics in the wild: hacking habits for health & happiness

Personal informatics is a class of systems that help people collect personal information to improve self-knowledge. Improving self-knowledge can foster self-insight and promote positive behaviors, such as healthy living and energy conservation. The development of personal informatics applications poses new challenges in human-computer interaction and creates opportunities for applications in various domains related to quality of life, such as fitness, nutrition, wellness, mental health, and sustainability. This workshop will continue the conversations from the 3 previous CHI workshops through discussions on practical lessons from previous research and development experiences. In particular, this workshop will extend this ongoing work through a focus on rapid prototyping and deployment in the wild. Topics covered will include designing interfaces for collecting and reflecting on personal data, building robust applications, and infrastructures to make applications easier to create.

My agent as myself or another: effects on credibility and listening to advice

People consider other people who resemble them to be more persuasive. Users may consider embodied conversational agents, or ECAs, to be more persuasive if the agents resemble them. In an experimental study, we found that users rated the persuasiveness of agents that resemble them higher than other agents. However, actual advice-taking diverged from this pattern; when users created the agents, users changed their choices less when interacting with the agents that resembled them. We conducted a follow-up study and found that resemblance and self-esteem affect interactions with agents that resemble users. We discuss the use of self-report and behavioral data in evaluations of agent interfaces and how agents that resemble users might foster particular social interactions with a system. We suggest that agents that resemble users may be more persuasive in advising users about their actions and decisions.