With the rise of wearables and well-being applications, the need for application design to facilitate and promote reflection through meaningful design is a must. As users are able to catalog a variety of bio-metric data, the presentation, integration, interactivity, and exploratory abilities need to be considered in addition to how the primary dashboard will present data. Currently, many wearables have a singular dashboard that highlights a few elements with limited interactivity. Additionally, many wearables that track bio-metrics limit the amount or type of data that a user can export or choose to integrate with other applications.

With these types of limitations, users who wish to reflect or compare metrics are limited in their ability to manipulate THEIR data. Many companies hide behind the “proprietary” nature of their data collection and limit the amount or type of data that can be integrated. While the users bio-metric data is being collected, who ultimately owns and has the ability to manipulate data is a larger question and area of concern.

In an effort to encourage users to reflect on personal bio-metric data, Kyoung et al. built an application that would allow users to import multiple data points into a singular application that would allow the user the ability to manipulate the data in a meaningful way[2]. Through this, users were able to find new patterns and reflect upon what they saw [2]. While the initial study had its limitations, it was promising to see user engagement on a new level. Participants involved in the study were able to see themselves in a new light and see new possibilities.

Many applications on the market that track personal data do not allow for efficient reflection or interactivity by the user. This fact was recognized by Baumer, who proposed a framework to promote user reflective design practices [1]. By incorporating design that promotes reflection through informatics, we can increase user engagement and add another level of personalization by facilitating the next step and use the data for self-reflection.

While designing to facilitate reflection and allowing the user additional interactivity with their data, is a challenge. Users are ultimately effected by the limitations by the software that comes with the wearable or is able to integrate with the wearable. Until users have ultimate control over their bio-metrics and more companies see the benefit in allowing users the ability to manipulate data in their own way, true reflective practices will continue to stagnate. In a already competitive market, the lackluster of interactivity of dashboards, application features, and application integration will continue to hurt those companies trying to get a foothold in the booming wearable industry.

Companies creating wearables or applications designed for health/bio-metric integration should begin the work of how to allow users to take their data to the next level. By allowing users to level-up, it not only helps the users but it can potentially have the ripple effect of having a positive impact on the community around them. Not to mention, the company would also gain new users/ customers.

References:

[1] Eric P.S. Baumer. 2015. Reflective Informatics. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (April 2015). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702234

[2] Eun Kyoung Choe, Bongshin Lee, Haining Zhu, Nathalie Henry Riche, and Dominikus Baur. 2017. Understanding self-reflection. Proceedings of the 11th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare – PervasiveHealth ’17 (2017). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3154862.3154881

‌