Authors: Elyssia Barrie H Ong, Briane Paul Samson
Pages: 33–40
Self-tracking, an activity that involves monitoring collected data on oneself [1, 2, 3], has become in- creasingly prevalent in recent years, due to the development of new information technology, as well as the increased affordability and usage of mobile devices [4, 5]. As a result, a rise in users who monitor data for improving their health has been observed, as they have better access to means of monitoring their activities in greater detail [3] through the use of self-tracking health apps (e.g. Apple Health, MyFitnessPal) and wearable devices, such as smart watches and activity trackers (e.g. Fitbit), to collect and examine personal health-related data. However, self-motivation can decrease due to different user circumstances. These include priorities, lifestyles, and habits of the user, as well as other circumstances such as perceived novelty loss, poor user experience, and ambiguous or difficult goals, which affect how users conduct self-tracking in apps and hamper their progress towards achieving health goals. Given the issue decreased self-motivation poses to health goal achievement and health improvement of self-tracking users, we investigated factors that contribute to increasing and maintaining self-motivation while self-tracking for health goals, as well as the potential applications of these factors in health apps. To understand the habits and challenges of users in self-tracking for health, we conducted interviews with 15 participants who hail from different backgrounds and have experiences in using self-tracking apps related to health. Throughout the interview, participants were asked to share their experiences using self-tracking apps to achieve health goals, including habits developed, considerations made, and challenges faced while self-tracking. The data collected from participants resulted in about eight hours of interview footage from seven sessions on Zoom and eight chat records on Facebook Messenger and Viber. The interview recordings were then transcribed in Philippine languages, namely Filipino, English, and a mix of both. Based on the interview transcripts, we conducted an inductive thematic analysis [6], beginning with open coding to extract potentially relevant quotes and sort them into descriptive codes. The codes were further sorted into themes and sub-themes, which were then refined over multiple iterations. Our thematic analysis suggests that users value using convenient self-tracking methods, seeing notable progress changes toward a health goal, and gaining more external motivation from trusted confidants. The participants not only preferred more accessible and convenient methods of self-tracking for their health, but they also preferred to see only the health data they find relevant to them, which includes progress changes. This means that they expect readily available options that allow them to further adjust their self-tracking process to see some form of change in their progress or results. Moreover, auxiliary features of health apps were not used by most participants, while external motivation gained through said features such as reward systems, leaderboards, sharing and chat functions have produced minimal or temporary effects on user self-motivation for self-tracking. As an alternative, four participants instead maintained their self-motivation to self-track through social commitments with certain associates they trust. These findings reveal certain design opportunities, starting with streamlining app features. Allowing users to determine at the beginning of the self-tracking process which data and auxiliary features will be shown clears out irrelevant data from views immediately, and makes users aware of the auxiliary features from the start of using the self-tracking health app. The second design opportunity is reframing progress indicators in data visualizations. While adding options to change color, formats, and layout can be a starting point for providing customization to progress and result views, going beyond these simple options reveal a potential opportunity in reframing how progress is presented by providing options to (1) customize progress and result views, (2) incorporate user sentiments as part of progress, and (3) self-track episodically. The final design opportunity can be found in connecting users to accountability partners. Forming accountability partners from trusted associates allows the user and the associate to essentially assist each other in monitoring their progress or reinforcing certain habits, which shows promise in aiding the overall maintenance of self-motivation towards achieving a health goal. As self-tracking for health has become a more common activity, increasing or maintaining users’ self-motivation has also become more relevant to successful health goal achievement. Since user priorities from work and academics, as well as confusing or unappealing progress views are among the barriers found to maintaining self-motivation towards self-tracking and health goal achievement, the design opportunities show potential in addressing these issues, which, by extension, may also help users maintain or increase their self-motivation as they work towards their health goal. With this, future directions include implementing the design opportunities into features of self-tracking health apps, as well as conducting usability tests to further improve design implementation. An extension of this needfinding study may also be conducted to gather insights on self-tracking experiences from a larger sample of participants.
Proceedings of CHIRP 2024, May 9 2024, Biñan, Laguna