Wearables paired with data analytics and machine learning algorithms that measure physiological (and other) parameters are slowly finding their way into our workplace. Several studies have reported positive effects from using such “physiolytics” devices and purported the notion that it may lead to significant workplace safety improvements or to increased awareness among employees concerning unhealthy work practices and other job‐related health and well‐being issues. At the same time, physiolytics may cause an overdependency on technology and create new constraints on privacy, individuality, and personal freedom. While it is easy to understand why organizations are implementing physiolytics, it remains unclear what employees think about using wearables at their workplace. Using an affordance theory lens, we, therefore, explore the mental models of employees who are faced with the introduction of physiolytics as part of corporate wellness or security programs. We identify five distinct user types each of which characterizes a specific viewpoint on physiolytics at the workplace: the freedom loving, the individualist, the cynical, the tech independent, and the balancer. Our findings allow for better understanding the wider implications and possible user responses to the introduction of wearable technologies in occupational settings and address the need for opening up the “user black box” in IS use research.

https://serval.unil.ch/resource/serval:BIB_0826A37DC025.P001/REF.pdf

Physiolytics at the workplace : Affordances and constraints of wearables use from an employee’s perspective

While the number of users sporting fitness trackers is constantly increasing, little is understood about how tracking goals can evolve over time. As recent studies have shown that the long-term health effects of trackers are limited, we need to readdress how trackers engage users. We conducted semi-structured interviews and an online survey to explore how users change their tracking goals. Based on our results, we created the Tracker Goal Evolution Model. The model describes how tracker goals can evolve from internal user needs through qualitative goals to quantitative goals that can be used with trackers. It also includes trust and reflection as key contextual factors contributing to meaningful transitions between goals. We postulate showing how tracker goals relate to other personal fitness goals as key for long-term engagement with trackers. Our model is useful for designers of future trackers as a tool to create evolving and meaningful tracking goals.

Supporting Meaningful Personal Fitness: the Tracker Goal Evolution Model

Workplace health and wellness programs are increasingly integrating personal health tracking technologies, such as Fitbit and Apple Watch. Many question whether these technologies truly support employees in their pursuit of better wellness levels, raising objections about workplace surveillance and further blurring of boundaries between work and personal life. We conducted a study to understand how tracking tools are adopted in wellness programs and employees' opinions about these programs. We find that employees are generally positive about incentivized health tracking in the workplace, as it helps raise awareness of activity levels. However, there is a gap between the intentions of the programs and individual experiences and health goals. This sometimes results in confusion and creates barriers to participation. Even if this gap can be addressed, health tracking in the workplace will not be for everyone; this has implications for the design of both workplace wellness programs and tracking technologies.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3025453.3025510

Finding the Right Fit: Understanding Health Tracking in Workplace Wellness Programs

For many, an interest in Human-Computer Interaction is equivalent to an interest in usability. However, using computers is only one way of relating to them, and only one topic from which we can learn about interactions between people and technology. Here, we focus on not using computers – ways not to use them, aspects of not using them, what not using them might mean, and what we might learn by examining non-use as seriously as we examine use.

Beyond the user : use and non-use in HCI

The research community on the study and design of systems for personal informatics has grown over the past decade. To take stock of what the topics the field has studied and methods the field has used, we map and label 523 publications from ACM's library, IEEE Xplore, and PubMed. We surface that the literature has focused on studying and designing for health and wellness domains, an emphasis on understanding and overcoming barriers to data collection and reflection, and progressively fewer contributions involving artifacts being made. Our mapping review suggests directions future research could explore, such as identifying and resolving barriers to tracking stages beyond collection and reflection, engaging more with domain experts, and further discussing the privacy and ethical concerns around tracked data.

/pdf/mapping-and-taking-stock-of-the-personal-informatics-3jxbj8ucz2.pdf

Mapping and Taking Stock of the Personal Informatics Literature

Personal health technologies are increasingly introduced in workplace settings. Yet little is known about workplace implementations of activity tracker use and the kind of experiences and concerns employees might have when engaging with these technologies in practice. We report on an observational study of a Danish workplace participating in a step counting campaign. We find that concerns of employees who choose to participate and those who choose not to differ. Moreover, privacy concerns of participants develop and change over time. Our findings challenge the assumption that consumers are becoming more comfortable with perceived risks associated with wearable technologies, instead showing how users can be initially influenced by the strong positive rhetoric surrounding these devices, only to be surprised by the necessity to renegotiate boundaries of disclosure in practice.

Sharing Steps in the Workplace: Changing Privacy Concerns Over Time

Sedentary work is a contributing factor to growing obesity levels worldwide. Research shows that step-counters can offer a way to motivate greater physical mobility. We present an in-situ study of a nation-wide workplace step-counting campaign. Our findings show that in the context of the workplace steps are a socially negotiated quantity and that participation in the campaign has an impact on those who volunteer to participate and those who opt-out. We highlight that specific health promotion initiatives do not operate in a vacuum, but are experienced as one out of many efforts offered to the employees. Using a social ecology lens we illustrate how conceptualizing a step-counting campaign as a health promotion rather than a behavior change effort can have implications for what is construed as success.

Steps, Choices and Moral Accounting: Observations from a Step-Counting Campaign in the Workplace

The development of self-tracking technologies has resulted in a burst of research considering how self-tracking practices manifest themselves in everyday life. Based on a 5-month-long photo elicita...

Episodic use: Practices of care in self-tracking:

Studying in-situ technology use over time can be difficult and this is especially so when considering technologies such as activity tracking devices explicitly designed to be unobtrusive. Yet understanding activity tracking in practice is crucial, as tracking technologies become important tools for health promotion and health insurance programs. In this paper, we describe a method for a longitudinal participant-driven photo elicitation study of activity tracking. During the five-month long study, our drop-out rates were low and we observed idiosyncratic practices with lapses and particular use patterns among participants along with significant self-reflection on activity tracking as a practice. We describe our method in detail, discussing the necessary adaptations for the study of activity tracking practices. We offer our experiences of benefits and challenges of this process, and suggest points for consideration for future studies in the area.

Nanna Gorm

Papers

Finding the Right Fit: Understanding Health Tracking in Workplace Wellness Programs

Sharing Steps in the Workplace: Changing Privacy Concerns Over Time

Steps, Choices and Moral Accounting: Observations from a Step-Counting Campaign in the Workplace

Episodic use: Practices of care in self-tracking:

Participant Driven Photo Elicitation for Understanding Activity Tracking: Benefits and Limitations