A Survey on Sleep Visualizations for Fitness Trackers

Abstract

We contribute the results of an exploratory study and a survey on visualizations for fitness trackers. Fitness trackers are becoming ubiquitous trackers of personal data. They often come with small attached displays that show micro visualizations of data such as heart rate, step counts, sleep duration, or number of floors climbed. Unfortunately, little is known about how wearers of fitness trackers use and perceive these micro visualizations. To collect data on the use of fitness visualizations, we conducted ten personal interviews with regular wearers of fitness trackers. Inspired by frequent responses regarding sleep tracking, we deployed an online questionnaire specifically on sleep visualizations for fitness trackers. Our results show that most participants were interested particularly in seeing previous night's sleep data on their fitness trackers and preferred visualizations that were easy to read like the hypnogram and bar as well as donut charts for sleep phases and duration.