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 Dickson
Scottish
Product/Service Design

Advisor: Heather Martin

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.

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

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. STUDENT

EXTREME USER

Mapping Research Candidates
HAS CHILDREN

ERIC
PERNILLE RUNE

LIVING WITH
LIVING ALONE PARTNER/HUSBAND

AMANDA KRISTIAN
MARTIN
FRANCESSCA

JON

LAURA RUNE. P
KATE
DAVID

WORKING


Reasearch Candidates

Amanda bligh David Kearford Eric Stevenson

Francessca Mustaffi Jon Wettersen Kate Pilkington

Kristian Kørrup Martin Wøldik Laura Ceriol

Pernille Christoffersen Rune Bottzauw Rune Dittmer


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)

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