Sean A. Munson

It's not that i don't have problems, i'm just not putting them on facebook: challenges and opportunities in using online social networks for health

To understand why and how people share health information online, we interviewed fourteen people with significant health concerns who participate in both online health communities and Facebook. Qualitative analysis of these interviews highlighted the ways that people think about with whom and how to share different types of information as they pursue social goals related to their personal health, including emotional support, motivation, accountability, and advice. Our study suggests that success in these goals depends on how well they develop their social networks and how effectively they communicate within those networks. Effective communication is made more challenging by the need to strike a balance between sharing information related to specific needs and the desire to manage self-presentation. Based on these observations, we outline a set of design opportunities for future systems to support health-oriented social interactions online, including tools to help users shape their social networks and communicate effectively within those.

Social Media Technology and Government Transparency

Researching and evaluating social media initiatives is essential to encourage usage, continually improve the tools and policies governing their use, and develop governance processes that incorporate social media participation in its many forms.

A lived informatics model of personal informatics

Current models of how people use personal informatics systems are largely based in behavior change goals. They do not adequately characterize the integration of self-tracking into everyday life by people with varying goals. We build upon prior work by embracing the perspective of lived informatics to propose a new model of personal informatics. We examine how lived informatics manifests in the habits of self-trackers across a variety of domains, first by surveying 105, 99, and 83 past and present trackers of physical activity, finances, and location and then by interviewing 22 trackers regarding their lived informatics experiences. We develop a model characterizing tracker processes of deciding to track and selecting a tool, elaborate on tool usage during collection, integration, and reflection as components of tracking and acting, and discuss the lapsing and potential resuming of tracking. We use our model to surface underexplored challenges in lived informatics, thus identifying future directions for personal informatics design and research.

Happier together: integrating a wellness application into a social network site

What are the benefits and drawbacks of integrating health and wellness interventions into existing online social network websites? In this paper, we report on a case study of deploying the Three Good Things positive psychology exercise as a Facebook application. Our experience shows that embedding a wellness intervention in an existing social website is a viable option. In particular, we find adherence rates on par with or better than many other Internet-based wellness interventions. We also gained insights about users’ privacy and audience concerns that inform the design of social network-based wellness applications. Participants did not want all of their entries to be shared with all their Facebook friends, both because they did not want others to know some things and because they did not want to clutter others’ newsfeeds. Users found it compelling, however, to interact with their friends around some “Good Things” they had posted.

Taming data complexity in lifelogs: exploring visual cuts of personal informatics data

As people continue to adopt technology based self tracking devices and applications, questions arise about how personal informatics tools can better support self tracker goals. This paper extends prior work on analyzing and summarizing self tracking data, with the goal of helping self trackers identify more meaningful and actionable findings. We begin by surveying physical activity self trackers to identify their goals and the factors they report influence their physical activity. We then define a cut as a subset of collected data with some shared feature, develop a set of cuts over location and physical activity data, and visualize those cuts using a variety of presentations. Finally, we conduct a month long field deployment with participants tracking their location and physical activity data and then using our methods to examine their data. We report on participant reactions to our methods and future design opportunities suggested by our work.

Unequal Representation and Gender Stereotypes in Image Search Results for Occupations

Information environments have the power to affect peoples perceptions and behaviors. In this paper, we present the results of studies in which we characterize the gender bias present in image search results for a variety of occupations. We experimentally evaluate the effects of bias in image search results on the images people choose to represent those careers and on peoples perceptions of the prevalence of men and women in each occupation. We find evidence for both stereotype exaggeration and systematic underrepresentation of women in search results. We also find that people rate search results higher when they are consistent with stereotypes for a career, and shifting the representation of gender in image search results can shift peoples perceptions about real-world distributions. We also discuss tensions between desires for high-quality results and broader societal goals for equality of representation in this space.

Social Participation in Health 2.0

Computer scientists are working with biomedical researchers, policy specialists, and medical practitioners to usher in a new era in healthcare. A recently convened panel of experts considered various research opportunities for technology-mediated social participation in Health 2.0.

Beyond Abandonment to Next Steps: Understanding and Designing for Life after Personal Informatics Tool Use

Recent research examines how and why people abandon self tracking tools. We extend this work with new insights drawn from people reflecting on their experiences after they stop tracking, examining how designs continue to influence people even after abandonment. We further contrast prior work considering abandonment of health and wellness tracking tools with an exploration of why people abandon financial and location tracking tools, and we connect our findings to models of personal informatics. Surveying 193 people and interviewing 12 people, we identify six reasons why people stop tracking and five perspectives on life after tracking. We discuss these results and opportunities for design to consider life after self tracking.

Boundary Negotiating Artifacts in Personal Informatics: Patient-Provider Collaboration with Patient-Generated Data

Patient-generated data is increasingly common in chronic disease care management. Smartphone applications and wearable sensors help patients more easily collect health information. However, current commercial tools often do not effectively support patients and providers in collaboration surrounding these data. This paper examines patient expectations and current collaboration practices around patient-generated data. We survey 211 patients, interview 18 patients, and re-analyze a dataset of 21 provider interviews. We find that collaboration occurs in every stage of self- tracking and that patients and providers create boundary negotiating artifacts to support the collaboration. Building upon current practices with patient-generated data, we use these theories of patient and provider collaboration to analyze misunderstandings and privacy concerns as well as identify opportunities to better support these collaborations. We reflect on the social nature of patient-provider collaboration to suggest future development of the stage-based model of personal informatics and the theory of boundary negotiating artifacts.

A framework for self-experimentation in personalized health

OBJECTIVE To describe an interdisciplinary and methodological framework for applying single case study designs to self-experimentation in personalized health. The authors examine the frameworks applicability to various health conditions and present an initial case study with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). METHODS AND MATERIALS An in-depth literature review was performed to develop the framework and to identify absolute and desired health condition requirements for the application of this framework. The authors developed mobile application prototypes, storyboards, and process flows of the framework using IBS as the case study. The authors conducted three focus groups and an online survey using a human-centered design approach for assessing the frameworks feasibility. RESULTS All 6 focus group participants had a positive view about our framework and volunteered to participate in future studies. Most stated they would trust the results because it was their own data being analyzed. They were most concerned about confounds, nonmeaningful measures, and erroneous assumptions on the timing of trigger effects. Survey respondents (N = 60) were more likely to be adherent to an 8- vs 12-day study length even if it meant lower confidence results. DISCUSSION Implementation of the self-experimentation framework in a mobile application appears to be feasible for people with IBS. This framework can likely be applied to other health conditions. Considerations include the learning curve for teaching self-experimentation to non-experts and the challenges involved in operationalizing and customizing study designs. CONCLUSION Using mobile technology to guide people through self-experimentation to investigate health questions is a feasible and promising approach to advancing personalized health.