research-article

Why we use and abandon smart devices

Authors:

Christian Koehler,

Theresa Jean Tanenbaum,

David H. NguyenAuthors Info & Claims

UbiComp '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

Pages 635 - 646

https://doi.org/10.1145/2750858.2804288

Published: 07 September 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Smart devices are becoming increasingly commercially available. However, uptake of these devices has been slow and abandonment swift, which indicates that smart devices may not currently meet the needs of users. To advance an understanding of the ways users benefit from, are challenged by, and abandon smart devices, we asked a group of users to purchase smart sensing devices to advance themselves towards a personal, self-defined goal. We found that participants abandoned devices because they did not fit with the their conceptions of themselves, the data collected by devices were perceived to not be useful, and device maintenance became unmanageable. Participants used devices because they had developed routines and because devices were useful, satisfied curiosity, and held hope for potential benefit to them. We propose ways to reduce barriers, motivate use, and argue for envisioning an additional function of these devices for short-term interventions, in addition to standard long-term use.

References

[1]

Ananthanarayan, S., Sheh, M., Chien, A., Profita, H., and Siek, K. Pt Viz: towards a wearable device for visualizing knee rehabilitation exercises. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press (2013) 1247--1250.

Digital Library

[2]

Ananthanarayan, S., Lapinski, N., Siek, K., and Eisenberg, M. Towards the crafting of personal health technologies. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems. ACM Press (2014) 587--596.

Digital Library

[3]

Axelrod, L., Fitzpatrick, G., Balaam, M, Mawson, S., Burridge, J., Ricketts, I., Smith, P. P., & Rodden, T. A Toolkit to Explore Lived Experience of Motivation: When Words are Not Enough. In Proc. Of the International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth). (2011) 32--39.

[4]

Barreto, M. L., Szóstek, A., Karapanos, E., Nunes, N. J., Pereira, L., & Quintal, F. Understanding families' motivations for sustainable behaviors. Computers in Human Behavior 40 (2014), 6--15.

Digital Library

[5]

Choe, E. K., Lee, N. B., Lee, B., Pratt, W., and Kientz, J. A. Understanding Quantified-selfers' Practices in Collecting and Exploring Personal Data. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press (2014), 1143--1152.

Digital Library

[6]

Consolvo, S., Klasnja, P., McDonald, D. W., and Landay, J. A. Goal-setting considerations for persuasive technologies that encourage physical activity. In Proc. Persuasive, ACM Press (2009).

Digital Library

[7]

Consolvo, S., McDonald, D. W., Toscos, T., Chen, M. Y., Froehlich, J., Harrison, B., Klasnja, P., LaMarca, A., LeGrand, L., Libby, R., Smith, I., and Landay, J. A. Activity sensing in the wild: a field trial of ubifit garden. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press (2008), 1797--1806.

Digital Library

[8]

Fahrni, T., Kuhn, M., Sommer, P., Wattenhofer, R., and Welten, S. Sundroid: solar radiation awareness with smartphones. In Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing. ACM Press (2011), 365--374.

Digital Library

[9]

Fritz, T., Huang, E. M., Murphy, G. C., and Zimmermann, T. Persuasive Technology in the Real World: A Study of Long-term Use of Activity Sensing Devices for Fitness. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press (2014), 487--496.

Digital Library

[10]

Froehlich, J., Dillahunt, T., Klasnja, P., Mankoff, J., Consolvo, S., Harrison, B., and Landay, J. A. UbiGreen: Investigating a Mobile Tool for Tracking and Supporting Green Transportation Habits. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press (2009), 1043--1052.

Digital Library

[11]

Gram-Hanssen, K. Consuming technologies -- developing routines. Journal of Cleaner Production 16 (2008), 1181--1189.

[12]

Grönvall, E., Verdezoto, N. Beyond Self-Monitoring: Understanding Non-functional Aspects of Home-based Healthcare Technology. In Proc. of the 15^th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, ACM Press (2013), 587--596.

Digital Library

[13]

Jackson, T. Motivating Sustainable Consumption: a review of evidence on consumer behavior and behavioural change: a report to the Sustainable Development Research Network (White paper). Center for Environmental Strategy, 2005.

[14]

Klasnja, P., Pratt, W. Managing Health With Mobile Technology. Interactions 21, 1 (2014), 66--69.

Digital Library

[15]

Ledger, D., and McCaffrey, D. Inside Wearables: How the Science of Human Behavior Change Offers the Secret to Long-Term Engagement (White paper). Endeavor Partners LLC (2014).

[16]

Li, I., Dey, A., and Forlizzi, J. A Stage-based Model of Personal Informatics Systems. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press (2010), 557--566.

Digital Library

[17]

Li, I., Dey, A., and Forlizzi, J. Understanding my data, myself: supporting self-reflection with ubicomp technologies. In Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, ACM Press (2011), 405--414.

Digital Library

[18]

Lim, B. Y., Shick, A., Harrison, C., and Hudson. S. E. 2010. Pediluma: motivating physical activity through contextual information and social influence. In Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (TEI). ACM Press (2011), 173--180.

Digital Library

[19]

Lin, J. J., Mamykina, L., Lindtner, S., Delajoux, G., and Strub, H. B. Fish'n'Steps: encouraging physical activity with an interactive computer game. In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Ubiquitous Computing. ACM Press (2006), 261--278.

Digital Library

[20]

Macvean, A. and Robertson, J. Understanding exergame users' physical activity, motivation and behavior over time. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press (2013), 1251--1260.

Digital Library

[21]

Rooksby, J., Rost, M., Morrison, A., and Chalmers, M. C. Personal tracking as lived informatics. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press (2014), 1163--1172.

Digital Library

[22]

Shih, P. C., Han, K., Poole, E. S., Rosson, M. B., Carroll, J. M. Use and adoption challenges of wearable activity trackers. In iConference Proceedings (2015).

[23]

Sung, J., Christensen, H. I., and Grinter, R. E. Robots in the wild: understanding long-term use. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction, ACM Press (2009), 45--52.

Digital Library

[24]

Ur, B., Jung, J., Schechter, S. Intruders versus intrusiveness: teens' and parents' perspectives on home-entryway surveillance. In Proceedings of the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. ACM Press (2014), 129--139.

Digital Library

[25]

Walsh, G. and Golbeck, J. StepCity: a preliminary investigation of a personal informatics-based social game on behavior change. In Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press (2014), 2371--2376.

Digital Library

[26]

Widmer, R., Oswald-Krapf, H., Sinha-Khetriwal, D., Schnellmann, M., Böni, H. Global perspectives on ewaste. Environmental Impact Assessment Review 25 (2005), 436--458.

[27]

Wong, M. H., Wu, S. C., Deng, W. J., Yu, X. Z., Luo, Q., Leung, A. O. W., Wong, C. S. C, Luksemburg, W. J., Wong, A. S. Export of toxic chemicals -- A review of the case of uncontrolled electronic-waste recycling. Environmental Pollution 149 (2007), 131--140.

[28]

Yin, L., Bozler, C., Harburg, D. V., Omenetto, F., & Rogers, J. A. Materials and fabrication sequences for water soluble silicon integrated circuits at the 90nm mode. Applied Physics Letters 106 (2015).

Cited By

Dino MDion KAbadir PBudhathoki CHuang CPadula WHimmelfarb CDavidson P(2024)The impact of a mixed reality technology-driven health enhancing physical activity program among community-dwelling older adults: a study protocolFrontiers in Public Health10.3389/fpubh.2024.138340712Online publication date: 14-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1383407
Zhu YLong YWang HLee KZhang LWang S(2024)Digital Behavior Change Intervention Designs for Habit Formation: Systematic ReviewJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/5437526(e54375)Online publication date: 24-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/54375
Takeuchi HIshizawa TKishi ANakamura TYoshiuchi KYamamoto Y(2024)Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention for Stabilizing Sleep Hours of Japanese Workers: Microrandomized TrialJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/4966926(e49669)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/49669
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Why we use and abandon smart devices
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

Recommendations

Psychological barriers of using wearable devices by seniors: A mixed-methods study
Abstract
Wearable devices have several benefits for the fast-growing senior adult population. However, the adoption rate of these devices by seniors is low and our understanding of their attitudes and behaviors is limited. This study explored ...
Highlights
- Psychological barriers to seniors using wearable devices are empirically examined.
Activity Recognition in Older Adults with Training Data from Younger Adults: Preliminary Results on in Vivo Smartwatch Sensor Data
ASSETS '21: Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Self-tracking using commodity wearables such as smartwatches can help older adults reduce sedentary behaviors and engage in physical activity. However, activity recognition applications that are typically deployed in these wearables tend to be trained ...
Quantified Factory Worker - Expert Evaluation and Ethical Considerations of Wearable Self-tracking Devices
Mindtrek '18: Proceedings of the 22nd International Academic Mindtrek Conference

Following the Quantified Self trend, everyday self-tracking practices have become common. Still, self-monitoring of people at work is a rather new research topic. Self-tracking of employees' activities, mental state and emotions enables data-based ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UbiComp '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

September 2015

1302 pages

ISBN:9781450335744

DOI:10.1145/2750858

General Chairs:
Kenji Mase
Nagoya University, JP
,
Marc Langheinrich
Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), CH
,
Daniel Gatica-Perez
IDIAP-EPFL, CH
,
Program Chairs:
Hans Gellersen
Lancaster University, UK
,
Tanzeem Choudhury
Cornell University
,
Koji Yatani
Univerisity of Tokyo, JP

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Yahoo! Japan: Yahoo! Japan
SIGMOBILE: ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing
FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc.: FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc.
Google Inc.
ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
Rakuten Institute of Technology: Rakuten Institute of Technology
Microsoft: Microsoft
Bell Labs: Bell Laboratories
SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
KDDI
Panasonic: Panasonic Corporation
NTT DoCoMo
Telefónica: Telefónica
ISTC-PC: Intel Science and Technology Center for Pervasive Computing

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 September 2015

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Conference

UbiComp '15

Sponsor:

Yahoo! Japan
SIGMOBILE
FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc.
ACM
Rakuten Institute of Technology
Microsoft
Bell Labs
SIGCHI
Panasonic
Telefónica
ISTC-PC

UbiComp '15: The 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

September 7 - 11, 2015

Osaka, Japan

Acceptance Rates

UbiComp '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 101 of 394 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 764 of 2,912 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

UBICOMP '24

Sponsor:
sigchi
sigchi

The 2024 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

October 5 - 9, 2024

Melbourne , VIC , Australia

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

265
Total Citations
View Citations
3,504
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)306
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)38

Reflects downloads up to 10 Aug 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Dino MDion KAbadir PBudhathoki CHuang CPadula WHimmelfarb CDavidson P(2024)The impact of a mixed reality technology-driven health enhancing physical activity program among community-dwelling older adults: a study protocolFrontiers in Public Health10.3389/fpubh.2024.138340712Online publication date: 14-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1383407
Zhu YLong YWang HLee KZhang LWang S(2024)Digital Behavior Change Intervention Designs for Habit Formation: Systematic ReviewJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/5437526(e54375)Online publication date: 24-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/54375
Takeuchi HIshizawa TKishi ANakamura TYoshiuchi KYamamoto Y(2024)Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention for Stabilizing Sleep Hours of Japanese Workers: Microrandomized TrialJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/4966926(e49669)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/49669
Stevenson RChowdhury ELobo JWestern MBilzon J(2024)Influence of the intelligent knee osteoarthritis lifestyle app (iKOALA) on knee joint painBMC Musculoskeletal Disorders10.1186/s12891-024-07198-325:1Online publication date: 24-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12891-024-07198-3
Nolasco HVargo AMoreeuw MHara TKise K(2024)Augmenting Sleep Behavior with a Wearable: Can Self-Reflection Help?Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 202410.1145/3652920.3653049(278-281)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652920.3653049
Salehzadeh Niksirat KVelykoivanenko LZufferey NCherubini MHuguenin KHumbert M(2024)Wearable Activity Trackers: A Survey on Utility, Privacy, and SecurityACM Computing Surveys10.1145/364509156:7(1-40)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3645091
Motahar TWiese J(2024)Investigating Technology Adoption Soon After Sustaining a Spinal Cord InjuryProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36435078:1(1-24)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643507
Kolovson SSo SMunson S(2024)Using Speculative Design to Understand Preferred Futures for the Design and Use of Tracking Data in U.S. College Sport TeamsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36410288:CSCW1(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641028
Kouaho WEpstein D(2024)Socioeconomic Class in Physical Activity Wearables Research and DesignProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642789(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642789
Ibrahim ZNurain NClawson J(2024)Tracking During Ramadan: Examining the Intersection of Menstrual and Religious Tracking Practices Among Muslim Women in the United StatesProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642374(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642374
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents