Updated Final Project Document (CIID)

LIFE IS AN ACT OF BALANCE an exploration into how personal informatics can facilitate behaviour change and enable people to feel like they have a more balanced life

Eilidh DicksonScottishProduct/Service Design

Advisor: Heather Martin

Eilidh Dickson, CIID/DKDS Pilot Year, 9th June 2009

I AM INTERESTED IN AND INSPIRED BY....

For my final project I am investigating on how you give people the ability to change elements of

their behaviour, in order for them to feel like they have a balanced life (subjective to the individ-

ual) Either by allowing them to become more aware and learn about their lifestyle habits, so they

can make behavioural changes themselves, or by providing them with tools or services that will

actively help them make changes to their lifestyle.

I am especially interested to see if the emerging field of Personal Informatics can play a role in

helping people achieve this. If you could track intangible information about your day-to-day

actions would it trigger people to change their behaviour? I believe this new realm has huge

potential to redefine the way in which we interact with the physical world and gain insights about

our actions that make up our daily routines. I am excited that this greater awareness has the

potential to help us to adjust and moderate our behaviour in a number of positive ways.

Currently in our everyday lives we are commonly engulfed in specific contexts, which makes it

difficult to see the bigger picture. I am curious to understand if personal informatics can enable

people to pinpoint areas of their life that bring them personal fulfillment and support them to

experience this more often.

An area I see as an underlying thread throughout the project is addressing the issue of ‘time

poverty. People need to feel connected to people, to places they live, even the food they eat.

Traditionally this was much easier to achieve, as family all lived together, you knew all your

relatives and you knew that your food had come from your back garden. These connections have

been weakened because of a fast pace of life. The advance of new labour saving technologies has

allowed us to achieve more in a shorter space of time, yet instead of using the time we save to

‘slow’ down, we are prone to making ourselves even busier.


RELATED PROJECTS AND REFERENCES

At the very beginning of my final project I collected some examples around personal informat-

ics and mapped them out, purely to understand what was already available. Below are some of

the more successful and interesting ideas I collected. They all focus on very specific areas of an

individuals life, that helps them to monitor and control their behaviour.

Nike +

Nike + is one of the most commercial and well discussed personal informatics tools currently

available. The system is made up of a small chip that you insert in your running shoes, combined

with a personal online service. The tangible UI which is imbedded in the sole of your shoes

communicates with your Apple iPod (which has pre-loaded software) feeding it with information

about your running to help you track your training regime. The system essentially becomes a

digital personal trainer. After you have completed your training session you can plug your iPod

into your computer and log into your personal Nike + account. What I think has greatly

contributed to the success of the Nike + system is that even though you have a personal account

you are part of a community. Your web based account allows you to provide training tips and

advice to other people and recommend good running routes. By being part of community I really

believe that it makes peoples actions feel more valued.


Wattson

The Wattson is a new kind of home appliance that is networked to a sensor attached to your

home’s electric meter box. Using colours and numbers, the Wattson device displays your energy

consumption and stores it on an online database making it easy for you to manage your

electricity usage and therefore save money. Not only is the system hugely informative and

practical… the device also looks great.

Google Power Meter

How much does it cost to leave your TV on all day? Which uses more power every month — your

dishwasher or your washing machine? Is your household more or less energy efficient than

similar homes in your neighborhood? These are some of the questions you will be able to answer

with a new prototype Google are experimenting with. Google power meter helps you become

more energy efficient and save money by pinpointing what devices are using specific amounts of

energy. You can even have friendly competition between your friends and neighbours.

Last Fm

Is an online web tool that monitors your music habits by connecting to your itunes or other

media software. Every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you like.

It suggests friends based on your music tastes and recommends songs from their music

collections and yours too.


Dopplr

Dopplr is an online tool used to track your traveling habits. Dopplr members can share personal

and business travel plans privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places to stay, eat

and explore in cities around the world. Each year you get an annual review of all your traveling,

including when your travel plans have overlapped with friends and how much impact you are

having on the environment. What I really like about dopplr is the flexibility it provides, you can

update your profile on your personal profile, through your mobile or on other social

networking sites, and you can sync it all to you iCAL or outlook calendar on your computer. It

appears to be very seamless.

References

Johnny Holland, The Power of Personal Infomatics

http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/04/the-power-of-personal-informatics/

Addressing the issue of ‘time poverty’

http://www.slowmovement.com/

Tools for knowing more about your body and mind

http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/


Frog Design on Personal Informatics

http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/greener-gadgets-saving-the-worldone-meter-at-a-time.

html

Personal Informatics, Matt Jones & Tom Coates

http://www.slideshare.net/blackbeltjones/polite-pertinent-and-pretty-designing-for-the-newwave-

of-personal-informatics-493301

Behaviour is our Medium, Robert Fabricant (Frog Design)

http://www.slideshare.net/frogdesign/interaction-design-is-not-about-computing-

technology?type=presentation

TED talk on meta data

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6t1JxElEVw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fi

nbox%2F%3Fref%3Dmb&feature=player_embedded

Pervasive Design article

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009745.html

MY STARTING POINT

My starting point was a curiosity to investigate how design can be used to change people’s

behaviour especially within the context of life balance. This interest was very much

inspired by our TUI project at CIID that focused on using RFID technology to create an

awareness of the environmental impact caused by certain food products transportation. On

completion of this project I further investigated it by writing an article on personal Informatics

for an online Interaction Design magazine called Johnny Holland. During this I found out that

there are currently a number of personal informatics tools on the market to help people balance

their lives, mainly focusing around health, finances and energy consumption. Some of these have

been a great success while others are just a waste of time. When looking at these examples I was

disappointed by the lack of imagination that was driving this emphasis on data displays and was

very skeptical that any bar chart on a screen would actually motivate anyone to change his or

her behaviour. I was interested in how to trigger an emotional experience to motivate behavioural

change and find a more specialized area that could be addressed by personal informatics to help

people feel more balanced.


INITIAL EXPLORATIONS

After conducting some initial desk research on personal informatics and existing tools to help

people balance their lives, the majority of my time was spent on planning (1 week) conducting

(1 week) and analyzing user research (1 week)

Objective

My objective for my user research was to gain an understanding of what it means for people to

live a balanced life, what are people’s personal values they need to meet to feel comfortable in

their lifestyle, how does this change depending on what stage of their life they are at and do they

use any tools or strategies to achieve this.

To understand how people’s values change at different stages of their lives I conducted research

with three different user groups, Students, couples that were working and families. Within these

categories there were also some extreme users that included an avid sportsman, someone with

diabetes and two people that were away from home frequently due to work travel. I was

interested in hearing if people who had more extreme lifestyles had different strategies to keep

themselves feeling in control.

Mapping Research Candidates

STUDENT

WORKING

LIVING ALONE LIVING WITH PARTNER/HUSBAND

EXTREME USER

HAS CHILDREN

PERNILLEERIC

MARTIN

JON

LAURA

RUNE

AMANDA

RUNE. P

FRANCESSCA

KATE

KRISTIAN

DAVID


Reasearch Candidates

Amanda bligh David Kearford Eric Stevenson

Francessca Mustaffi Jon Wettersen Kate Pilkington

Kristian Kørrup Martin Wøldik

Pernille Christoffersen Rune Bottzauw Rune Dittmer

Laura Ceriol


Research Planning

Out of 12 people I conducted nine 2 hour research sessions in person, 2 Skype interviews to the

US and one remote experiment in Italy. During the research sessions I used a number of

reflection tools I had designed to help facilitate the session and provoke conversation. I also

had a set of questions on more specific areas, that I adapted depending on how the discussion

evolved. These questions covered areas such as typical daily routines and habits, enjoyable parts

of their day, things they don’t have time to achieve, how they manage their time to meet all their

priorities, use of labour saving technology, triggers that make them to feel stressed, how they

deal with conflicts in their time, what their ‘feel good’ activities are and how their priorities have

changed as their responsibilities have.

Conducting Research

I used a Card sorting activity where I got people to choOse from a list of things they do either

on a daily, weekly or random basis. This was used as a warm up activity to get people starting to

think about what is important to them. It was a great conversation starter as you could

question them on their answers.


I also designed a mapping tool to get people to think about more specific values they need to

achieve to feel in control and what really brings them meaning in life. This exercise was very

valuable as it forced people to take a moment and reflect on what was really important to them.

People found the exercise difficult, especially when they started to realize that they were

achieving very few of the things that were important and a priority to them. Although the task

was challenging almost everyone I interviewed found it beneficial to have a moment of reflection

for themselves where they could rethink what their priorities were.

During my research a few people also kept a diary so i could gain insight into their routines,

sleeping and eating habits. After completing the diary I questioned them to see if they had

gained any value from writing in it each day. People responded with saying that they felt like they

wanted to be more productive throughout their day so they had something positive and

interesting to write in it. This shows that actively logging your activities can lead to increased

motivation to do well.


During some of the interview sessions I would get people to draw an emotional time line map of

a certain period of time that they decided on. The peaks in the diagram are when they are

feeling out of balance. This allowed me to see that periods of inbalance are often due to a

change or transition in their lifestyle. This often included moving to a new city, leaving home or

starting a new job. Although these are not negative situations to be in, the uncertainty and the

anxiety of starting something new can make people feel out of balance.

The remote exercise in Italy involved an extreme user (Laura, who is rarely at home due to work

related travel) keeping a detailed diary for one week. In this she recorded her day-to-day

activities and routines, including eating and sleeping habits. I also asked her to reflect on how

she felt throughout the day and in the moment while she was doing certain tasks. If anything

made her feel stressed she was to record it and the same goes for if she was happy. As well as

the written diary she also took photographs of the following:

1. Things that you do on a regular basis that make you feel comfortable and content.

2. Any tools or strategies that help you meet your priorities.

3. Things that you make you feel uncomfortable or unbalanced in your life.

The result of this exercise provided detailed and rich information, with a number of key insights

to what it is like when you are continually on the move.

Research Analysis

On completion of my user research I created character boards for each person, writing down key

quotes and observations from their session. At this point I then filtered the information again and

selected the most intriguing and surprising quotes from each respondent that I did not

anticipate. Within these insights three underlying themes were formed. These were

Communication with Family and Friends, Food and Eating Habits and Personal Prioritising and

Planning.


Interview notes typed up and organised!

One of my character boards

Mapping out all my insights


Understanding what each quote means

Creating How might we statements

Voting on the most interesting insights


Within each of these themes I used the IDEO method of asking what does each insight mean, and

then writing “How might we statements” for them all. At this point there were still a number of

areas I could choose to develop, but I decided to focus on personal prioritizing as this is where I

felt most challenged, excited and saw potential to apply personal informatics to. Some of the key

insights in this theme were:

“I transfer work trips to our calendar at home, but only a few weeks before, mainly so Mas

[husband] can’t see what’s ahead of him!”

People only really use a ‘public’ calendar for really important events that are necessary to

share.

“I don’t currently write in a diary as I imagine someone reading it, so I won’t put anything

personal in it…….I like the approach of this diary, I actually find that I want to be more productive

just so u can write something positive in it, kind of indirect motivation”

Having to actively record you activities allows you to reflect and become motivated to do well.

“I would love to be able to schedule time for reading…….but it sounds kind of dorky….so I would

love to be able to track some of these things I would like to be able to do without having to

actually track it”

People feel silly scheduling ‘me time’ but are interested to understand what they spend their

time on and when.

“I keep a personal to-do list, I prioritise everything, so when I have been neglecting something I

move it up the list, I keep it on my desktop so I can always see it”

People need to have a constant reminder of what it important to do otherwise they will ignore

it.

“Hobbies are great when they are built into your life, I love it, but when you don’t do it for a while

you forget how much you enjoy it until you do it again”

People easily forget how important something is and how much they enjoy it when they stop

doing it.

“Prioritizing is difficult, it would be good to have ground rules, or a rule of thumb to follow”

People like to be guided in some when it comes to making personal decisions.

“I found writing in a diary can be really helpful, as it gave me a very good chance of stopping to

have a deeper insight into my thoughts and feelings”

Periods of reflection are a positive thing!


DESIGN CHALLENGE

Due to an increased pace of life and personal competition with ones self to become ‘someone

better’ people are continually busy, going from one task to the next. This has been heightened

by a more prominent use of technology in our lives, which has resulted in lifestyle barriers that

used to exist have been broken; people can now work anywhere, contact anyone any time and

achieve much more on the move. The result of having this fast pace of life is that people become

absorbed in ‘achieving more’ and detached from what their day-to-day life looks like and what

brings them a real sense of enjoyment. Within their busy lives people find it hard to prioritize

when making decisions in their own life and would often like to be guided in some way. Some

people use diaries and calendars to schedule (make time for) ‘practical appointments’ but very

rarely for personal activities, yet they are interested to understand what they spend their time

on, especially for things they enjoy doing, but rarely have time to do. In order for people to have

a balanced life on a bigger scale they have to first reconnect to themselves, focusing on what

they need to be content rather than everything that is possible.

How might we create a flexible and customizable platform that will help people to reconnect to

themselves, enabling them to prioritize in their lives by keeping track of and reminding them

of past experiences that they can then use as a reference point to make decisions?

Other Questions to probe for brainstorming

-How might we create a greater awareness of elements of our lives that bring us enjoyment, and

how much time we actually spend on these activities.

-How might we compare what your day actually looks like with what you would ideally like it to

be.

-How can the act of recording these experiences be seamlessly integrated into your lifestyle.


FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

Brainstorming and Idea Generation

After i had formulated my design challenge that i felt was the correct combination of being open

enough to generated lots of wild idea’s, but not so open that i would have no theme running

through them, it was time to start brainstorming.

I facilitated a brainstorming session to generate ideas surrounding my design challenge. This was

a huge success!! A lot of creative ideas were generated that proved to be great inspiration and

triggered new thinking. After completing the brainstorm i spent a little time to cluster my ideas

before going through them. Some the clusters that formed were goal orientated tracking,

tracking with sensors and using tangible objects to visualize behaviour.

Initial Seed

Out of all the drawings and post-its that were filtered i picked 5 and sketched them out

further,thinking of possible solutions of how they could be implemented into people’s lives. By

the end of this short exercise there was already one idea that was stuck in my mind. The idea was

based around tracking your happiness at different locations through GPS and inputing who you

were with and what you were doing to add a specific context.


Experience Prototype 1

At this point i decided to do an initial experience prototype to test the basis of my idea. For the

experiment i recruited 4 people and, on a map of Copenhagen i got got them to plot their

weekends activities, after giving them step by step instructions to follow. These were:

Step 1: Write a list of priorities you like to do on (i) a daily basis (ii) a weekly basis.

Step 2: On different coloured post-its categorize these priorities, how do you divide up your time.

Step 3: On the map of Copenhagen mark out where you live and work.

Step 4: Plot out your weekend activities by writing individual activities you did, at what time and

with who. Write these activities on coloured post-its corresponding to one of the categories you

already defined. (use the color code you set)

Step 5: Place the post-it on the map at the location of where the activity took place

Step 6: Give the activity a rating out of 5, of how satisfying it was (writing on the post it as well)


Some of my key findings from this exercise were....

-People are unaware of how much they actually do, and how busy they are until they actually sit

down and think about it.

-People have very different views about how they categorize their time.

-Using colour to show different categories, very quickly enables you to see patterns in behaviour

especially related to the home and workplace.

-Putting priorities into categories allows you to what areas you spend most time on in your life,

and then you can go to a deeper layer of data to find out specific activities. etc.

-The people who you are with often has a huge influence on the satisfaction of the activity your

doing.

To learn more about these patterns and behaviours i decided to test the experience prototype on

myself as well. But instead of putting a few days on a map, I recorded everything i did each day

on a new map. This way i was able to compare each day individually, and see the patterns and

routines that occured.

Scenarios

After these initial experience prototypes i could see that there was potential in my idea,

especially by the reactions of the people i had tested it on. My next step was to develop the idea

further, for this i first created a simple system diagram of service and then started on a detailed

scenario, showing how the system would work, the user experience and the critical touchpoints.

During this time i thought of the different stages of the service, how the data would be recorded,

any feedback the user would get, how would the user review their data and reflect on it and how

the service could be expanded in the future. The result was a very detailed and slightly

overwhelming scenario!


After the scenario was produced, i decided to look at the service on a more generic level, and

created an initial service blueprint. This allowed me to focus and establish the key user

interactions, the role of the service provider and the touch points of the service that need to be

designed for my experience prototyping and my end communication. I have also come up with a

name for the service (“echo”) and started working on the branding at this point, as i felt this was

an important factor to make my service appear believable! Throughout this process of mapping

out my service i was able to continually develop the idea, seeing where there were holes that

needed to be thought out and coming up with new touchpoints that could add to the over all

experience. I was very focused on creating tangible touchpoints throughout the service, so it

wasn’t purely screen based.


Experience prototype 2

When i felt i had my service mapped out fully, i wanted to start doing more experience

prototyping, to test different elements of the service. onducted a quick experience prototype to

test of few questions i had about my idea. From my first prototyping session i wanted to learn:

How much effort is it to log your daily activities and goals you want to achieve? and do you gain

something from doing so?

What is it like to have to quantify your happiness after doing certain tasks, and what is the the

most natural way to do it?

What is it like to receive friendly nudges of encouragement and motivation? Do they work or

does it just become irritating receiving them?

During the experiment i asked Sarah to track specific tasks she wanted to achieve by sending an

SMS to the service (my mobile phone) when she had completed it. At this point she also had to

quantify her happiness and satisfaction, by using a set of cards i had given her which asked her

to illustrate how she was feeling in a variety of ways i.e with words, colour, icons. While all this

was going on the service was also sending her prompts and motivation via SMS to encourage her

to complete her goals!


My key learnings from this experiment were......

-Receiving messages and reminders worked as a good support line

-By recoding what she was doing, it brought things to her focus, she started to realise why she

was or wasn’t doing something

-She liked that the service was personal, so she felt more commitment towards it and

responsibility for her actions, as it was something that was helping her

-The easiest was to quantify how she was feeling was with with a number or slider, or sometimes

using words to describe it.

-Seeing what you have achieved it very motivating, and remembering how good you felt when

you did it is encouraging to do it again

-knowing it was a person on the end of the phone and not automated made her feel more

motivated and responsible. So how can the service be personal to each user and seem like a

buddy or friend.


Experience prototype 3

During my second experience prototype i wanted to question what motivates people to stick to a

program and how do people react when they are rewarded for it. During this experiment, like the

previous one i got Mimi to track certain tasks she wanted to complete, and alert the service (me!)

when she had done so through either an SMS or by leaving a physical note on my desk. When

Mimi was doing well i would give her rewards in different ways…These included..

1. an email with a reward voucher attached that she had to print out and bring to me to then

exchange it for a gift

2. a surprise gift and note left on her desk one morning

3. simple “well done” messages to her mobile phone


The experiment gave even more new learnings:

-The system has to be flexible enough to deal with changes in people’s schedules and spontane-

ous events that may happen.

-When a gift was a complete surprise, it was better than knowing you were about to receive

something in advance

-Big rewards were not expected as part of the service, but it was nice when the little surprises

were personal and tailored to the individual as it makes you feel like the service knows you.

After conducting these prototyping sessions and consolidating these learnings, i made some

small changes to some of the feedback mechanisms that would be used in the service. I then

started to think about the final communication of the service. I created a storyboard for my final

scenario, this allowed me to imagine a real person using the echo service as well as see how

many props and service touchpoints i needed to design and produce to believably communicate

the idea in my video. From this point on the focus of my work was producing the final interfaces

and physical artifacts needed....


My Concept

Who Is it for?

People who know that they have an unbalanced life and are unhappy about it. They want to

become more aware of their habits and understand their behaviour so they know where to make

changes. It is for people that currently live a busy lifestyle and find it hard to prioritize, often

sacrificing the things they really enjoy doing, so they can achieve more in other areas of their

life. These people are motivated to do well and want to change!

What is the idea?

A service that provides a platform for people to self reflect and become more aware of their

lifestyle patterns, it helps them pinpoint areas of their life that brings them personal enjoyment

and supports them to experience it more often.

It works by using GPS tracking and direct reporting (data input) through the users mobile phone

to build up a map of how they spend their time, with who and how happy they are. The data that

is tracked and recorded is then transformed into different visualizations that the person can

interact with, reflect on and see opportunities for change in their behaviour.

Service Stages: Working Progress (needs screen shots/images, after video is filmed)

Sign Up

Before the user can start using the service they will log onto the echo website, and decide which

subscription they would like to sign up for. At this point they will commit to the service and make

a payment, shortly after they will receive a confirmation email to reassure them that their order

has been processed.

Implementation: set-up and sync

A few days later the customer will receive the echo welcome pack, in this it will have everything

they need to get started including details to download the relevant software, instructions and a

membership card. The customer will download the software and start setting up their profile, so

the service can get to know them. During the set-up they will input where they live and work, the

priorities they want to achieve that make them happy and the people they most often spend time

with. When all this information has been input, they can then sync their phone and computer,

then they are ready to start using the service!

Use: Recording Data

Now that the customers phone has the echo application on it, it will be tracking their location

through GPS and storing this information. Whenever the user goes to complete one of their


priorities, they simply capture their activity by using a simple user interface, they can then enter

what activity it is they are doing and who they are with, from the database of information they all

ready created during their set-up.

Reflection in the moment, and on the go feedback

When they user has completed the activity they then have the opportunity to reflect in the

moment, they can rate their happiness along a scale and add another level of context by either

recording a voice clip of by tagging the location and event. While they are using the echo service

they can also receive motivation and feedback on the move, including friendly prompts about

activities they haven’t completed and reminders of past experiences when they walk past

locations they have previously tagged.

View data and reflection over time

At any point the user can sync their phone to their computer to view their data on their personal

profile. The information is transformed into a visualization of a map showing then where they

spend their time, who with, what they are doing and how happy they are. The personal data can

be interacted with and filtered so they can pin point when they are happiest, how well they are

meeting their priorities and when they last did an activity or spent time with a specific person.

The core of this part of the service is for the user to reflect on their behavior and see changes

over time.

Expanding: Building a community and international travel

As the service expands there are opportunities for people to share their data with friends they

trust through an online platform, this could lead to exchange of advice and suggestions based

common interests, or even finding common interests with people, that you didn’t know you had.

There is also opportunities for the service to expand so that you could receive information or

personal maps based on your priorities for when you travel abroad, helping you carry out your

‘happy activities’ while in another country

What is the Value?

Giving people a tool to reflect, allows them to reconnect to what their day-to-day life looks like

and understand what they spend their time on, with who and how happy they are. In turn this

allows them to pinpoint areas of their life that bring them personal enjoyment. By giving people

the platform to see these trends and patterns in their behaviour and opportunities for change

they might normally miss, it can help people moderate their behaviour in a number of positive

ways. The service is not designed to control behaviour, but to monitor and display actions in a

way that will raise questions with the person.

UNDERSTAND BEHAVIOR = UNDERSTAND WHERE CHANGES CAN BE MADE

Updated Final Project Document (CIID)

Technology

Transcript of Updated Final Project Document (CIID)