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

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.