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Flowers or a robot army?: encouraging awareness & activity with personal, mobile displays

Published:21 September 2008Publication History

ABSTRACT

Personal, mobile displays, such as those on mobile phones, are ubiquitous, yet for the most part, underutilized. We present results from a field experiment that investigated the effectiveness of these displays as a means for improving awareness of daily life (in our case, self-monitoring of physical activity). Twenty-eight participants in three experimental conditions used our UbiFit system for a period of three months in their day-to-day lives over the winter holiday season. Our results show, for example, that participants who had an awareness display were able to maintain their physical activity level (even during the holidays), while the level of physical activity for participants who did not have an awareness display dropped significantly. We discuss our results and their general implications for the use of everyday mobile devices as awareness displays.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Other conferences
      UbiComp '08: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Ubiquitous computing
      September 2008
      404 pages
      ISBN:9781605581361
      DOI:10.1145/1409635

      Copyright © 2008 ACM

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      Publication History

      • Published: 21 September 2008

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