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Understanding Barriers of Missing Data in Personal Informatics Systems

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Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PH 2022)

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Abstract

Advanced personal informatics (PI) tools enable users to collect and reflect on a wide range of personal data. Researchers consider missing data, or discontinuous (sparse) data caused by device malfunctions or human errors, an important barrier for adopting PI tools in their daily routines. While a lot is known about why missing data occurs, less is known about its impact on user reflection or how tools can be designed to mediate/reduce its negative effects in PI systems. In this work, we focused on exploring the importance and impact missing data has on user reflection and extracting insights to improve the design of PI reflection tools. We present a semi-structured interview to investigate the impact of missing data on users’ daily usage on two user groups, trainees and maintainers. We then provide design implications for incorporating visualization of estimated data (synthetic data) in the reflection stage, as a potential solution to the missing data problem. In this work, we provided data-driven implications for the design of future PI tools to help users reflect upon and mitigate missing data in their tracking activities.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, School of Computing and Information, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

    Nannan Wen & Jacob Biehl

  2. Digital Promise Global and University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

    Aditi Mallavarapu

  3. School of Computing and Information and Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

    Erin Walker

  4. Department of Informatics and Networked Systems, School of Computing and Information, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA

    Dmitriy Babichenko

Authors
  1. Nannan Wen
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  2. Aditi Mallavarapu
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  3. Jacob Biehl
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  4. Erin Walker
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  5. Dmitriy Babichenko
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nannan Wen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Athanasios Tsanas

  2. Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Andreas Triantafyllidis

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© 2023 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Wen, N., Mallavarapu, A., Biehl, J., Walker, E., Babichenko, D. (2023). Understanding Barriers of Missing Data in Personal Informatics Systems. In: Tsanas, A., Triantafyllidis, A. (eds) Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare. PH 2022. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 488. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34586-9_40

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34586-9_40

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-34585-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-34586-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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