Personal Informatics and Analytics

Collecting and analyzing personal data for insight and wellness

ActivityRiver allows people to track trends in their activities, thereby allowing them to plan future activities, and track differences between planned and actual activity. <em>Image source: wikihow</em>
ActivityRiver allows people to track trends in their activities, thereby allowing them to plan future activities, and track differences between planned and actual activity. Image source: wikihow

We are now awash in data about ourselves – some of which we collect on our own (e.g. FitBit), others of which are collected by us on our behalf (e.g. Google Location History), and others we are barely aware of being collected (e.g. your energy bill). In this project, we are looking for new ways of collecting this information, exploring this information, and devising ways of understanding this information (Huang, Tory, Aseniero, Bartram, Bateman, Carpendale, Tang, & Woodbury, 2015; Carpendale, Tory, & Tang, 2014). We have explored a variety of application spaces, including personal activity tracking (Aseniero, Tang, & Carpendale, 2014), physical visualizations (Payne, Carpendale, & Tang, 2014), and health applications (Rahman, Bhaskar, Maurer, & Tang, 2014; MacLeod, Tang, & Carpendale, 2013; Polleti, Baur, Tang, & Carpendale, 2012).

We are designing a migraine headache tracking tool that helps people understand the source and cause of their headaches.
We are designing a migraine headache tracking tool that helps people understand the source and cause of their headaches.

We are currently exploring new ways of visualizing this information in ways that address the specific and personal needs of users (Aseniero, Carpendale, & Tang, 2012), and for communication and interaction with health providers (missing reference). To do this, we have partnered with the Calgary Headache Assessment & Management Program, and are focusing on chronic headaches as a specific application space.

Publications

  1. Dandan Huang, Melanie Tory, Bon Adriel Aseniero, Lyn Bartram, Scott Bateman, Stacey Carpendale, Anthony Tang, and Robert Woodbury. (2015). Personal Visualization and Personal Visual Analytics. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 21, 3: 420–433. (journal).
  2. Jennifer Payne, Sheelagh Carpendale, and Anthony Tang. (2014). Physical Visualization and Personal Visual Analytics. In PVA 2014: A Personal Perspective on Visualization and Visual Analytics - Workshop at DIS 2014. (Carpendale, Sheelagh and Tory, Melanie and Tang, Anthony, Eds.) (workshop).
  3. Bon Adriel Aseniero, Anthony Tang, and Sheelagh Carpendale. (2014). River: Using Personalisation to Support Reflection on Personal Activities. In PVA 2014: A Personal Perspective on Visualization and Visual Analytics - Workshop at DIS 2014. (Carpendale, Sheelagh and Tory, Melanie and Tang, Anthony, Eds.) (workshop).
  4. Sheelagh Carpendale, Melanie Tory, and Anthony Tang. (2014). A Personal Perspective on Visualization and Visual Analytics. In DIS 2014 Companion: Proceedings of the 2014 Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems, ACM, 223–225. (inproceedings).
  5. S. M. Waliur Rahman, Rahul Kamal Bhaskar, Frank Maurer, and Anthony Tang. (2014). Supporting Chronic Headache Patientswith Visual Analytics. In PVA 2014: A Personal Perspective on Visualization and Visual Analytics - Workshop at DIS 2014. (Carpendale, Sheelagh and Tory, Melanie and Tang, Anthony, Eds.) (workshop).
  6. Haley MacLeod, Anthony Tang, and Sheelagh Carpendale. (2013). Personal informatics in chronic illness management. In GI ’13: Proceedings of the 2013 Graphics Interface Conference, Canadian Information Processing Society, 149–156. (conference).
    Acceptance: 38% - 16/42.
  7. Julia Polleti, Dominikus Baur, Anthony Tang, and Sheelagh Carpendale. (2012). ECO|Balance - Exploring Design Issues for Mobile Persuasion. In Personal Informatics in Practice: Improving Quality of Life Through Data - Workshop at CHI 2012. (Li, Ian and Medynskiy, Yevgeniy and Froehlich, Jon and Larsen, Jakob Eg, Eds.) (workshop).
  8. Bon Adriel Aseniero, Sheelagh Carpendale, and Anthony Tang. (2012). Deep Personalization in Tools for Reflection. In Personal Informatics in Practice: Improving Quality of Life Through Data - Workshop at CHI 2012. (Li, Ian and Medynskiy, Yevgeniy and Froehlich, Jon and Larsen, Jakob Eg, Eds.) (workshop).