Flowers or a robot army?: encouraging awareness & activity with personal, mobile displays

  • Authors:

  • Sunny Consolvo;Predrag Klasnja;David W. McDonald;Daniel Avrahami;Jon Froehlich;Louis LeGrand;Ryan Libby;Keith Mosher;James A. Landay

  • Affiliations:

  • Intel Research Seattle, Seattle, WA and University of Washington, Seattle, WA;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;Intel Research Seattle, Seattle, WA;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;Intel Research Seattle, Seattle, WA;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;University of Washington, Seattle, WA;Intel Research Seattle, Seattle, WA and University of Washington, Seattle, WA

  • Venue:
  • UbiComp '08 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Ubiquitous computing
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Personal, mobile displays, such as those on mobile phones, are ubiquitous, yet for the most part, underutilized. We present results from a field experiment that investigated the effectiveness of these displays as a means for improving awareness of daily life (in our case, self-monitoring of physical activity). Twenty-eight participants in three experimental conditions used our UbiFit system for a period of three months in their day-to-day lives over the winter holiday season. Our results show, for example, that participants who had an awareness display were able to maintain their physical activity level (even during the holidays), while the level of physical activity for participants who did not have an awareness display dropped significantly. We discuss our results and their general implications for the use of everyday mobile devices as awareness displays.