There's no such thing as gaining a pound: reconsidering the bathroom scale user interface
There's no such thing as gaining a pound: reconsidering the bathroom scale user interface
The weight scale is perhaps the most ubiquitous health sensor of all and is important to many health and lifestyle decisions, but its fundamental interface--a single numerical estimate of a person's current weight--has remained largely unchanged for 100 years. An opportunity exists to impact public health by re-considering this pervasive interface. Toward that end, we investigated the correspondence between consumers' perceptions of weight data and the realities of weight fluctuation. Through an analysis of online product reviews, a journaling study on weight fluctuations, expert interviews, and a large-scale survey of scale users, we found that consumers' perception of weight scale behavior is often disconnected from scales' capabilities and from clinical relevance, and that accurate understanding of weight fluctuation is associated with greater trust in the scale itself. We propose significant changes to how weight data should be presented and discuss broader implications for the design of other ubiquitous health sensing devices.
[Awarded Best Paper, UBICOMP 2013]
978-1-4503-1770-2
401-410
Kay, Matthew
058809eb-3dd8-4424-88e2-e4b6cfab2560
Morris, Dan
bccb2317-290f-491e-9ade-92646d65f0ec
schraefel, m.c.
ac304659-1692-47f6-b892-15113b8c929f
Kientz, Julie
c39fd306-f747-4e53-8000-7689a24b49cc
2013
Kay, Matthew
058809eb-3dd8-4424-88e2-e4b6cfab2560
Morris, Dan
bccb2317-290f-491e-9ade-92646d65f0ec
schraefel, m.c.
ac304659-1692-47f6-b892-15113b8c929f
Kientz, Julie
c39fd306-f747-4e53-8000-7689a24b49cc
Kay, Matthew, Morris, Dan, schraefel, m.c. and Kientz, Julie
(2013)
There's no such thing as gaining a pound: reconsidering the bathroom scale user interface.
UbiComp '13 Proceedings the 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Zurich, Switzerland.
08 - 12 Sep 2013.
.
(doi:10.1145/2493432.2493456).
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
The weight scale is perhaps the most ubiquitous health sensor of all and is important to many health and lifestyle decisions, but its fundamental interface--a single numerical estimate of a person's current weight--has remained largely unchanged for 100 years. An opportunity exists to impact public health by re-considering this pervasive interface. Toward that end, we investigated the correspondence between consumers' perceptions of weight data and the realities of weight fluctuation. Through an analysis of online product reviews, a journaling study on weight fluctuations, expert interviews, and a large-scale survey of scale users, we found that consumers' perception of weight scale behavior is often disconnected from scales' capabilities and from clinical relevance, and that accurate understanding of weight fluctuation is associated with greater trust in the scale itself. We propose significant changes to how weight data should be presented and discuss broader implications for the design of other ubiquitous health sensing devices.
[Awarded Best Paper, UBICOMP 2013]
Text
ubi1252-kay.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Published date: 2013
Venue - Dates:
UbiComp '13 Proceedings the 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Zurich, Switzerland, 2013-09-08 - 2013-09-12
Organisations:
Electronics & Computer Science
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 360409
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/360409
ISBN: 978-1-4503-1770-2
PURE UUID: c2e146c7-4248-453b-8a9e-38e30764d094
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Date deposited: 06 Dec 2013 08:52
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:16
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Contributors
Author:
Matthew Kay
Author:
Dan Morris
Author:
m.c. schraefel
Author:
Julie Kientz
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