Contextual and design factors that influence the use of consumer technologies for self-management of stress by teachers

Persistent psychosocial stress is endemic in the modern workplace, including amongst secondary school teachers in England. There is intense interest in the potential role of digital technology such as apps, wearables and online programmes to support stress management but insufficient understanding of how the contexts of teachers’ work influence their use. Using a constructivist paradigm, a series of qualitative studies was conducted to understand the influence of these contextual factors. First semi-structured qualitative interviews with teachers were thematically analysed to reveal the physical, social and cultural contextual constraints on teachers’ stress management. Then to enable teachers’ choice of consumer technology for the longitudinal study, an analytical study generated a populated taxonomy of self-management strategies for stress with digital support options. This was presented in workshops to enable some informed choice. Finally, the qualitative longitudinal summer term study explored eight teachers’ experiences of using their chosen technology in their daily lives. The pandemic meant interviews were online and teachers were mainly working from home. The study was extended with six participants into the autumn term when all teachers had returned to school premises. Cross-case analysis revealed the teachers’ experiences of using technology for stress management included the explanatory power of contextually mediated data, generating awareness, permission to self-care and empathy. The findings suggest implications for self-determination theory (SDT). Thematic analysis revealed facilitators and barriers to using the technology in the school context. There are associated implications for school wellbeing support and designers, and considerations for the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). This thesis’ main contributions include unique insight into teachers’ experiences of consumer technologies for workplace stress management and the technology features that facilitate self-care. Stress awareness derived from interaction with the technology and personal data gave teachers permission to self-care. Facilitators included brief, discreet interactions and contextually relevant prompts and information. Barriers to use included insufficient technology instructions, and contextual constraints of the relentless work culture, social stigma and lack of privacy. This thesis also documents an innovative process for developing and populating a taxonomy to facilitate technology selection, including specifically for teachers managing stress. Finally, it makes recommendations of interest to designers, school leaders and policy makers seeking to improve teachers’ ability to digitally support their stress self-management

The use of extended reality (XR), wearable, and haptic technologies for learning across engineering disciplines

According to the literature, the majority of engineering degrees are still taught using traditional 19th-century teaching and learning methods. Technology has recently been introduced to help improve the way these degrees are taught. Therefore, this chapter discusses the state-of-the-art and applications of extended reality (XR) technologies, including virtual and augmented realities (VR and AR), as well as wearable and haptic devices, in engineering education. These technologies have demonstrated great potential for application in engineering education and practice. Empirical research supports that pedagogical modalities provide additional channels for information presentation and delivery, facilitating the sensemaking process in learning and teaching. The integration of VR, AR, wearable, and haptic devices into the learning environments can enhance user engagement and create immersive user experiences. This chapter explores their potential for increasing learning-based applicability in teaching and learning engineering

Smart Sensing Technologies for Personalised Coaching

People living in both developed and developing countries face serious health challenges related to sedentary lifestyles. It is therefore essential to find new ways to improve health so that people can live longer and can age well. With an ever-growing number of smart sensing systems developed and deployed across the globe, experts are primed to help coach people toward healthier behaviors. The increasing accountability associated with app- and device-based behavior tracking not only provides timely and personalized information and support but also gives us an incentive to set goals and to do more. This book presents some of the recent efforts made towards automatic and autonomous identification and coaching of troublesome behaviors to procure lasting, beneficial behavioral changes

Continuous Estimation of Smoking Lapse Risk from Noisy Wrist Sensor Data Using Sparse and Positive-Only Labels

Estimating the imminent risk of adverse health behaviors provides opportunities for developing effective behavioral intervention mechanisms to prevent the occurrence of the target behavior. One of the key goals is to find opportune moments for intervention by passively detecting the rising risk of an imminent adverse behavior. Significant progress in mobile health research and the ability to continuously sense internal and external states of individual health and behavior has paved the way for detecting diverse risk factors from mobile sensor data. The next frontier in this research is to account for the combined effects of these risk factors to produce a composite risk score of adverse behaviors using wearable sensors convenient for daily use. Developing a machine learning-based model for assessing the risk of smoking lapse in the natural environment faces significant outstanding challenges requiring the development of novel and unique methodologies for each of them. The first challenge is coming up with an accurate representation of noisy and incomplete sensor data to encode the present and historical influence of behavioral cues, mental states, and the interactions of individuals with their ever-changing environment. The next noteworthy challenge is the absence of confirmed negative labels of low-risk states and adequate precise annotations of high-risk states. Finally, the model should work on convenient wearable devices to facilitate widespread adoption in research and practice. In this dissertation, we develop methods that account for the multi-faceted nature of smoking lapse behavior to train and evaluate a machine learning model capable of estimating composite risk scores in the natural environment. We first develop mRisk, which combines the effects of various mHealth biomarkers such as stress, physical activity, and location history in producing the risk of smoking lapse using sequential deep neural networks. We propose an event-based encoding of sensor data to reduce the effect of noises and then present an approach to efficiently model the historical influence of recent and past sensor-derived contexts on the likelihood of smoking lapse. To circumvent the lack of confirmed negative labels (i.e., annotated low-risk moments) and only a few positive labels (i.e., sensor-based detection of smoking lapse corroborated by self-reports), we propose a new loss function to accurately optimize the models. We build the mRisk models using biomarker (stress, physical activity) streams derived from chest-worn sensors. Adapting the models to work with less invasive and more convenient wrist-based sensors requires adapting the biomarker detection models to work with wrist-worn sensor data. To that end, we develop robust stress and activity inference methodologies from noisy wrist-sensor data. We first propose CQP, which quantifies wrist-sensor collected PPG data quality. Next, we show that integrating CQP within the inference pipeline improves accuracy-yield trade-offs associated with stress detection from wrist-worn PPG sensors in the natural environment. mRisk also requires sensor-based precise detection of smoking events and confirmation through self-reports to extract positive labels. Hence, we develop rSmoke, an orientation-invariant smoking detection model that is robust to the variations in sensor data resulting from orientation switches in the field. We train the proposed mRisk risk estimation models using the wrist-based inferences of lapse risk factors. To evaluate the utility of the risk models, we simulate the delivery of intelligent smoking interventions to at-risk participants as informed by the composite risk scores. Our results demonstrate the envisaged impact of machine learning-based models operating on wrist-worn wearable sensor data to output continuous smoking lapse risk scores. The novel methodologies we propose throughout this dissertation help instigate a new frontier in smoking research that can potentially improve the smoking abstinence rate in participants willing to quit

Blending the Material and Digital World for Hybrid Interfaces

The development of digital technologies in the 21st century is progressing continuously and new device classes such as tablets, smartphones or smartwatches are finding their way into our everyday lives. However, this development also poses problems, as these prevailing touch and gestural interfaces often lack tangibility, take little account of haptic qualities and therefore require full attention from their users. Compared to traditional tools and analog interfaces, the human skills to experience and manipulate material in its natural environment and context remain unexploited. To combine the best of both, a key question is how it is possible to blend the material world and digital world to design and realize novel hybrid interfaces in a meaningful way. Research on Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) investigates the coupling between physical objects and virtual data. In contrast, hybrid interfaces, which specifically aim to digitally enrich analog artifacts of everyday work, have not yet been sufficiently researched and systematically discussed. Therefore, this doctoral thesis rethinks how user interfaces can provide useful digital functionality while maintaining their physical properties and familiar patterns of use in the real world. However, the development of such hybrid interfaces raises overarching research questions about the design: Which kind of physical interfaces are worth exploring? What type of digital enhancement will improve existing interfaces? How can hybrid interfaces retain their physical properties while enabling new digital functions? What are suitable methods to explore different design? And how to support technology-enthusiast users in prototyping? For a systematic investigation, the thesis builds on a design-oriented, exploratory and iterative development process using digital fabrication methods and novel materials. As a main contribution, four specific research projects are presented that apply and discuss different visual and interactive augmentation principles along real-world applications. The applications range from digitally-enhanced paper, interactive cords over visual watch strap extensions to novel prototyping tools for smart garments. While almost all of them integrate visual feedback and haptic input, none of them are built on rigid, rectangular pixel screens or use standard input modalities, as they all aim to reveal new design approaches. The dissertation shows how valuable it can be to rethink familiar, analog applications while thoughtfully extending them digitally. Finally, this thesis’ extensive work of engineering versatile research platforms is accompanied by overarching conceptual work, user evaluations and technical experiments, as well as literature reviews.Die Durchdringung digitaler Technologien im 21. Jahrhundert schreitet stetig voran und neue Geräteklassen wie Tablets, Smartphones oder Smartwatches erobern unseren Alltag. Diese Entwicklung birgt aber auch Probleme, denn die vorherrschenden berührungsempfindlichen Oberflächen berücksichtigen kaum haptische Qualitäten und erfordern daher die volle Aufmerksamkeit ihrer Nutzer:innen. Im Vergleich zu traditionellen Werkzeugen und analogen Schnittstellen bleiben die menschlichen Fähigkeiten ungenutzt, die Umwelt mit allen Sinnen zu begreifen und wahrzunehmen. Um das Beste aus beiden Welten zu vereinen, stellt sich daher die Frage, wie neuartige hybride Schnittstellen sinnvoll gestaltet und realisiert werden können, um die materielle und die digitale Welt zu verschmelzen. In der Forschung zu Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) wird die Verbindung zwischen physischen Objekten und virtuellen Daten untersucht. Noch nicht ausreichend erforscht wurden hingegen hybride Schnittstellen, die speziell darauf abzielen, physische Gegenstände des Alltags digital zu erweitern und anhand geeigneter Designparameter und Entwurfsräume systematisch zu untersuchen. In dieser Dissertation wird daher untersucht, wie Materialität und Digitalität nahtlos ineinander übergehen können. Es soll erforscht werden, wie künftige Benutzungsschnittstellen nützliche digitale Funktionen bereitstellen können, ohne ihre physischen Eigenschaften und vertrauten Nutzungsmuster in der realen Welt zu verlieren. Die Entwicklung solcher hybriden Ansätze wirft jedoch übergreifende Forschungsfragen zum Design auf: Welche Arten von physischen Schnittstellen sind es wert, betrachtet zu werden? Welche Art von digitaler Erweiterung verbessert das Bestehende? Wie können hybride Konzepte ihre physischen Eigenschaften beibehalten und gleichzeitig neue digitale Funktionen ermöglichen? Was sind geeignete Methoden, um verschiedene Designs zu erforschen? Wie kann man Technologiebegeisterte bei der Erstellung von Prototypen unterstützen? Für eine systematische Untersuchung stützt sich die Arbeit auf einen designorientierten, explorativen und iterativen Entwicklungsprozess unter Verwendung digitaler Fabrikationsmethoden und neuartiger Materialien. Im Hauptteil werden vier Forschungsprojekte vorgestellt, die verschiedene visuelle und interaktive Prinzipien entlang realer Anwendungen diskutieren. Die Szenarien reichen von digital angereichertem Papier, interaktiven Kordeln über visuelle Erweiterungen von Uhrarmbändern bis hin zu neuartigen Prototyping-Tools für intelligente Kleidungsstücke. Um neue Designansätze aufzuzeigen, integrieren nahezu alle visuelles Feedback und haptische Eingaben, um Alternativen zu Standard-Eingabemodalitäten auf starren Pixelbildschirmen zu schaffen. Die Dissertation hat gezeigt, wie wertvoll es sein kann, bekannte, analoge Anwendungen zu überdenken und sie dabei gleichzeitig mit Bedacht digital zu erweitern. Dabei umfasst die vorliegende Arbeit sowohl realisierte technische Forschungsplattformen als auch übergreifende konzeptionelle Arbeiten, Nutzerstudien und technische Experimente sowie die Analyse existierender Forschungsarbeiten

Design Principles of Mobile Information Systems in the Digital Transformation of the Workplace - Utilization of Smartwatch-based Information Systems in the Corporate Context

During the last decades, smartwatches emerged as an innovative and promising technology and hit the consumer market due to the accessibility of affordable devices and predominant acceptance caused by the considerable similarity to common wristwatches. With the unique characteristics of permanent availability, unobtrusiveness, and hands-free operation, they can provide additional value in the corporate context. Thus, this thesis analyzes use cases for smartwatches in companies, elaborates on the design of smartwatch-based information systems, and covers the usability of smartwatch applications during the development of smartwatch-based information systems. It is composed of three research complexes. The first research complex focuses on the digital assistance of (mobile) employees who have to execute manual work and have been excluded so far from the benefits of the digitalization since they cannot operate hand-held devices. The objective is to design smartwatch-based information systems to support workflows in the corporate context, facilitate the daily work of numerous employees, and make processes more efficient for companies. During a design science research approach, smartwatch-based software artifacts are designed and evaluated in use cases of production, support, security service, as well as logistics, and a nascent design theory is proposed to complement theory according to mobile information system research. The evaluation shows that, on the one hand, smartwatches have enormous potential to assist employees with a fast and ubiquitous exchange of information, instant notifications, collaboration, and workflow guidance while they can be operated incidentally during manual work. On the other hand, the design of smartwatch-based information systems is a crucial factor for successful long-term deployment in companies, and especially limitations according to the small form-factor, general conditions, acceptance of the employees, and legal regulations have to be addressed appropriately. The second research complex addresses smartwatch-based information systems at the office workplace. This broadens and complements the view on the utilization of smartwatches in the corporate context in addition to the mobile context described in the first research complex. Though smartwatches are devices constructed for mobile use, the utilization in low mobile or stationary scenarios also has benefits due they exhibit the characteristic of a wearable computer and are directly connected to the employee’s body. Various sensors can perceive employee-, environment- and therefore context-related information and demand the employees’ attention with proactive notifications that are accompanied by a vibration. Thus, a smartwatch-based and gamified information system for health promotion at the office workplace is designed and evaluated. Research complex three provides a closer look at the topic of usability concerning applications running on smartwatches since it is a crucial factor during the development cycle. As a supporting element for the studies within the first and second research complex, a framework for the usability analysis of smartwatch applications is developed. For research, this thesis contributes a systemization of the state-of-the-art of smartwatch utilization in the corporate context, enabling and inhibiting influence factors of the smartwatch adoption in companies, and design principles as well as a nascent design theory for smartwatch-based information systems to support mobile employees executing manual work. For practice, this thesis contributes possible use cases for smartwatches in companies, assistance in decision-making for the introduction of smartwatch-based information systems in the corporate context with the Smartwatch Applicability Framework, situated implementations of a smartwatch-based information system for typical use cases, design recommendations for smartwatch-based information systems, an implementation of a smartwatch-based information system for the support of mobile employees executing manual work, and a usability-framework for smartwatches to automatically access usability of existing applications providing suggestions for usability improvement

Modelling Malaysia residents’ behavioural intention to use smartwatch: the role of health technology and device benefits

Consumer smartwatches have been accessible for the worldwide consumer market since 2012 when Sony Corporation first offered them to the market. According to numerous smartwatch technology adoption journals, consumer smartwatch functionalities such as health technology, infotainment and communications, supported living and safety, and lifestyle and fashion are beneficial for social well-being. Researchers hypothesised that these practical applications which automatically manage individual personal information, simplify infotainment and communications, support safety and complement individual social lifestyles can improve individual social well-being and professional productivity. However, despite numerous benefits of consumer smartwatch technology, Malaysia population with good ICT and digital technology literacy have been slow to embrace smartwatches in comparison to other regional and global countries. Furthermore, smartwatch adoption research in Malaysia is still in its early stages, with only a few published studies accessible. These practical issues are the motivation for this study to examine Malaysia residents’ behavioural intention to use a consumer smartwatch. This study tested the factors that influence Malaysia residents’ behavioural intention to use a consumer smartwatch by adapting and extending the UTAUT2 theory with health technology and design benefit in a single study. The conceptual model consists of seven determinants with seven hypotheses representing technical, social, economic, health technology, and design benefit. The research process emphasised theory to practice inquiry technique, ethical practises, attaining reliability and validity, and bias minimization targeting a confidence level of 95% with an error margin of ±5%. The study empirically tested 366 valid responses from Malaysia residents collected using an online crosssectional self-administered survey questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the suggested conceptual model. Effort expectancy and price value were found to not influence Malaysia residents' behavioural intention to use a consumer smartwatch. Performance expectancy, social influence, health technology, and design benefits all have significant effects and positive influences on Malaysian residents' behavioural intention to use a smartwatch, while hedonic motivation has a significant effect and negative influence. These constructs were found to explain 65% of the proposed model behavioural intention. In conclusion, this study empirical findings based on extending the UTAUT2 theory generate awareness of the importance of performance expectancy, social influence, and hedonic motivation, health technology and design benefits in influencing Malaysians' iv behavioural intention to use a consumer smartwatch. The insights generated by this study based on the UTAUT2 theory provide new empirical information on the influence of health technology and design benefit which did previously not exist in any of the existing Malaysia smartwatch adoption research. The findings provide new reference dimensions for consumer smartwatch manufacturers seeking to improve their understanding of the Malaysia consumer smartwatch market

Obstacles to wearable computing

In the year 2021, wearable technology could look beautiful and feel magical, but instead is exemplified by a plain wristband that looks suspiciously like a prison monitor. How can we make wearable technology that respects our privacy, enhances our daily lives, integrates with our other connected devices without leashing us to a smartphone, and visually expresses who we are? This study uses a novel method of participatory design fiction (PDFi) to understand potential users of everyday wearable technology through storytelling. I recruited participants from the general public and gave them a five-point prompt to create a design fiction (DF), which inspired the user-centred design of an everyday connected wearable device. The participants each received a technology probe to wear in the wild for a year. They then updated their DFs as a way to reflect on the implications of the technology. For the purposes of privacy, augmenting device functionality through interoperability, and integration into an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, I used the Hub-of-All-Things personal data store to provide the software infrastructure. By listening to their stories, we can elicit design concepts directly from the users, to help us create wearable IoT devices that put the wearer at the centre of the design process, and are satisfying both functionally and emotionally.The Alan Turing Institute Doctoral Scheme, University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology, The Kenneth Hayter Memorial Fun

Toward Data-Driven Digital Therapeutics Analytics: Literature Review and Research Directions

With the advent of Digital Therapeutics (DTx), the development of software as a medical device (SaMD) for mobile and wearable devices has gained significant attention in recent years. Existing DTx evaluations, such as randomized clinical trials, mostly focus on verifying the effectiveness of DTx products. To acquire a deeper understanding of DTx engagement and behavioral adherence, beyond efficacy, a large amount of contextual and interaction data from mobile and wearable devices during field deployment would be required for analysis. In this work, the overall flow of the data-driven DTx analytics is reviewed to help researchers and practitioners to explore DTx datasets, to investigate contextual patterns associated with DTx usage, and to establish the (causal) relationship of DTx engagement and behavioral adherence. This review of the key components of data-driven analytics provides novel research directions in the analysis of mobile sensor and interaction datasets, which helps to iteratively improve the receptivity of existing DTx.Comment: This paper has been accepted by the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinic