this information to promote behavior change. We will look at the application ....
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. (1st ed.). Crown Business.
SI 606: Personal Informatics: Designing technology for reflection and experimentation Winter 2013 – Thurs. 6:00 -9:00, NQ 1255 Erik Hofer (
[email protected]) Course Description Personal informatics refers to the technologies and data that help individuals measure and make sense of aspects of their own lives. New personal sensing technologies are revolutionizing the abilities of individuals to collect and process data about their lives -- ranging from alarm clocks that track brain waves during sleep to tiny devices that keep track of physical mobility during the day to homes that provide detailed reports of real time power use. This course introduces students to the social and technical issues that designers of these personal informatics technologies face in helping users understand and improve their lives through the use of data. We will examine the roles that measurement theory, information visualization, motivation, game design, ethics and computing all play in making aspects of life more quantifiable and in using this information to promote behavior change. We will look at the application of these technologies in the context of productivity, environmental sustainability and health. This course will be studio-based, with a focus on a semester-long group project to design a personal informatics application. Class meeting will consist of brief lectures, discussion of readings and design exercises.
Assignments and grading Final grades will be based on performance throughout the term, determined by the following items: • Group project – 45% • Individual reflection on group project – 5% • 3 individual assignments – 25% • Class participation – 25% The class participation grade will be based on participation in the discussion of readings and on the in class design exercises. All students will need to keep a sketchbook for the in class exercises. Late policy: Assignments may be turned in up to two days late, with a 10% penalty each day they are late. After two days, assignments will not be accepted.
Office Hours I will hold office hours in North Quad from 5-6 on Thursdays. Please email me (
[email protected]) to let me know if you plan to come. You can make an appointment for an alternate time by emailing Karen Kost (
[email protected]).
Learning Objectives After completing this course you should be able to: Understand different frameworks for personal informatics (stage-based, self-experimentation, “quantified self”), Conceptualize, design and implement a prototype of a personal informatics application Understand different approaches to measurement, Be able to identify and compensate for sources of invalidity in measurement, Design interfaces for different methods of qualitative and quantitative data collection, Understand the basic principles of sensing, Understand how to interface sensors to computer systems using the Arduino platform
Be familiar with a variety of models of motivation and behavior change, Understand several design approaches for implementing behavior change, Identify behavior change challenges in application design, Create strategies and features to make behavior changes more successful, Rationalize and analyze design decisions in the context of models of motivation and behavior change Develop an approach for creating persuasive visualizations, Understand the differences between graphical data analysis and presentation graphics, Understand the influences of art, design and research on visualization, Create visualizations of personal informatics data Understand the ethical challenges inherent in personal data collection, Be able to evaluate the ethical implications of systems designs from a variety of perspectives, Be able to identify potential privacy concerns and users risks Understand the ways that personal informatics approaches have been used in sustainability, productivity and health and wellness
Course topics and Schedule Week
Topic
Readings
Jan Jan Jan Jan
Introduction to PI Frameworks for PI Measurement and Methods Sensors and Devices
Li, Roberts, Neisser Webb, Scollon O’Sullivan, O’Reilly
Feb 7 Feb 14 Feb 21
Motivation Behavior change Game dynamics
Ajzen, Cialdini Heath, Prochaska McGonigal, Schell
Feb 28
Visualization
Sagmeister, Holmes, Yau
Mar 14 Mar 21 Mar 28
Ethical Considerations Applications: Sustainability Applications: Health and Wellness
Belmont Report Froehlich, Mun Consolovo08, Mamykina, Brown
Apr 4 Apr 11 Apr 18
Applications: Productivity Final presentations Final presentations
10 17 24 31
Assignments due
Group project proposal Measurement Group mid term update Motivation and behavior change
Group project presentation brief
Kim Visualization Final reflections
Academic Integrity At the University of Michigan and in all professional settings, academic integrity is a serious matter. All writing and design assignments must be your own work. Where others’ ideas are incorporated in assignments, they must be appropriated quoted and cited. All cases of plagiarism will be officially reported to SI’s Associate Dean for Academic Programs. Consequences will range from a failing grade on the assignment to expulsion from the University. For additional information about plagiarism, see the "Academic and Professional Integrity Policy Statement" in the SI Master's Student Handbook. If you have questions about appropriately crediting others’ ideas, please ask the instructor.
Accomodations
Please let me know if you require any other special accommodations due to religious practices, physical requirements, medical needs, or any other reasons.
Readings
Background Wolfe, G. (2009). Know thyself: Tracking every facet of life, from sleep to mood to
pain. Wired, 17(7), (http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_knowthyself) Wolf, G. (2010). The data-driven life, New York Times Magazine, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html) Quantified Self (www.quantifiedself.com)
Recommended Project Resources Igoe, T. (2007). Making things talk: practical methods for connecting physical objects. O’Reilly Media. Janert, P.K. (2010). Data analysis with open source tools. O’Reilly Media.
Frameworks Li, I., Dey, A., & Forlizzi, J. (2010). A stage-based model of personal informatics systems. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 557–566). Roberts, S. (2010). The unreasonable effectiveness of my self-experimentation. Medical Hypotheses. Neisser, U. (1988). Five kinds of self-knowledge. Philisophical psychology, 1(1), pp. 35-59.
Measurement and Methods Webb, E., Campbell, D. T., Schwartz, R. D., & Sechrest, L. (1966). Unobtrusive measures: Nonreactive research in the social sciences. Chicago, 1966. (Chapter 1) Scollon, C., Kim-Prieto, C., and Diener, E. Experience Sampling: Promises and Pitfalls, Strengths and Weaknesses. Journal of Happiness Studies, 4, 2003, pp. 5-34.
Sensors and Devices O'Sullivan, D. & Igoe, T., (2004). Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers (1st ed.). Course Technology PTR. (Chapter 8).
O’Reilly, T. & Battelle, J. (2009). Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on. O’Reilly Media.
Motivation Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 50(2), 179–211. Cialdini, R. B. & Goldstein, R. (2004). Social influence: compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, pp. 591-621.
Behavior Change Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (1st ed.). Crown Business. (Chapters 1,3) Prochaska, J.O. & Velicer, W.F. (1997). The transtheoretical model of health behavior change. American Journal of Health Promotion, 12 (1), pp. 38-48.
Game Dynamics McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Penguin Press HC. Chapters 1,4. Schell, J. (2008). The Art of Game Design: A Series of Lenses. Morgan Kaufman: New York. Ch. 11-12.
Visualization Holmes, T. G. (2007). Eco-visualization: combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition (p. 162). Sagmeister, S. (2008). Things I have learned in my life so far. Abrams. Yau, N., & Schneider, J. (2009). Self-Surveillance. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 35(5), 24–30.
Sustainability Froehlich, J., Findlater, L., & Landay, J. (2010). The design of eco-feedback technology. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems
(pp. 1999–2008). Mun, M., Reddy, S., Shilton, K., Yau, N., Burke, J., Estrin, D., Hansen, M., et al. (2009). Peir, the personal environmental impact report, as a platform for participatory sensing systems research. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services (pp. 55–68).
Health and Wellness Consolvo, S., McDonald, D. W., Toscos, T., Chen, M. Y., Froehlich, J., Harrison, B., Klasnja, P., et al. (2008). Activity sensing in the wild: a field trial of ubifit garden. In Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1797–1806). Mamykina, L., Mynatt, E., & Terry, M. A. (2001). Time aura: Interfaces for pacing. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (p. 151).
Productivity T. Kim, A. Chang, A. Pentland, Meeting Mediator: Enhancing Group Collaboration with Sociometric Feedback, In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work, San Diego, CA, pp.457-466
