Approach
Sleep tracking
Personal informatics
Quantified self
Visualization
Data
Field study
Quantitative analysis
Qualitative analysis
Period
2015-2016
SleepExplorer
A Visualization Tool to Make Sense of Correlations between Personal Sleep Data and Contextual Factors
Getting enough quality sleep is a key part of a healthy lifestyle. Many people are tracking their sleep through mobile and wearable technology, together with contextual information that may influence sleep quality, like exercise, diet, and stress. However, there is limited support to help people make sense of this wealth of data, i.e., to explore the relationship between sleep data and contextual data. We strive to bridge this gap between sleep- tracking and sense-making through the design of SleepExplorer, a web-based tool that helps individuals understand sleep quality through multi-dimensional sleep structure and explore correlations between sleep data and contextual information. Based on a two-week field study with 12 participants, this paper offers a rich understanding on how technology can support sense-making on personal sleep data: SleepExplorer organizes a flux of sleep data into sleep structure, guides sleep-tracking activities, highlights connections between sleep and contributing factors, and supports individuals in taking actions. We discuss challenges and opportunities to inform the work of researchers and designers creating data-driven health and well-being applications.
The figure below shows SleepExplorer interface: left side shows time-series plots of sleep-structural metrics and right side shows correlations sleep metric and contextual factors tracked by a user. Green bubbles represent positively correlated factors, and red bubbles show negative correlations. The shade of a bubble indicates the strength of correlation. User can access an explanation for each relationship through pop-up windows by hovering the mouse over a bubble.
Publication
Zilu Liang, Bernd Ploderer, Wanyu Liu, Yukiko Nagata, James Bailey, Lars Kulik, and Yuxuan Li. 2016. SleepExplorer: a visualization tool to make sense of correlations between personal sleep data and contextual factors. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 20, 6 (November 2016), 985–1000. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-016-0960-6