Marit Bentvelzen
Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
The ever-increasing number of devices quantifying our lives offers a perspective of high awareness of one's wellbeing, yet it remains a challenge for personal informatics (PI) to effectively support data-based reflection. Effective reflection is recognised as a key factor for PI technologies to foster wellbeing. Here, we investigate whether building tangible representations of health data can offer engaging and reflective experiences. We conducted a between-subjects study where n=60 participants explored their immediate blood pressure data in relation to medical norms. They either used a standard mobile app, built a data representation from LEGO bricks based on instructions, or completed a free-form brick build. We found that building with instructions fostered more comparison and using bricks fostered focused attention. The free-form condition required extra time to complete, and lacked usability. Our work shows that designing instructional physicalisation experiences for PI is a means of improving engagement and understanding of personal data.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581198
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2023.acm.org/)