Mental workload as personal data: designing a cognitive activity tracker

Wilson, Max L.; Sharon, Natalia; Maior, Horia A.; Midha, Serena; Craven, Michael P.; Sharples, Sarah

doi:10.1145/3170427.3170665

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Authors

Dr MAX WILSON MAX.WILSON@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Associate Professor

Natalia Sharon

Horia A. Maior

Serena Midha

MICHAEL CRAVEN michael.craven@nottingham.ac.uk
Principal Research Fellow

SARAH SHARPLES SARAH.SHARPLES@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Professor of Human Factors

Abstract

Research continues to correlate physical signals with mental activity, as opposed to physical activity, with physiological sensors. Further, with the proliferation of wearable technology, it seems imminent that our smart watches can soon keep track of our mental activity as well as our physical activity. Our research is working towards accurately measuring Mental Workload ‘in the wild’ using physiological sensors. While we work towards that goal, however, we have begun to explore the design aspects of representing personal cognitive data to users; analogous to a step counter for physical activity. We present the results of diary studies, focus groups, and prototyping exercises to identify design considerations for future cognitive activity trackers.

Citation

Wilson, M. L., Sharon, N., Maior, H. A., Midha, S., Craven, M. P., & Sharples, S. (2018). Mental workload as personal data: designing a cognitive activity tracker. In CHI EA '18 Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3170665

Conference Name	3rd Symposium on Computing and Mental Health: Understanding, Engaging, and Delighting Users
Start Date	Apr 21, 2018
End Date	Mar 26, 2018
Acceptance Date	Feb 20, 2018
Publication Date	Apr 21, 2018
Deposit Date	Mar 26, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Apr 21, 2018
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Book Title	CHI EA '18 Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
ISBN	978-1-4503-5621-3
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3170665
Keywords	Mental Workload; personal data; activity monitoring
Public URL	https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/912657
Additional Information	The symposium is part of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018), Montreal, Canada, 21-26 April 2018.