LogIn: Unlock Journaling System for Personal Informatics

TL;DR

This paper introduces unlock journaling as a low-burden, effective alternative to traditional self-report methods in health and wellness, demonstrating its advantages through a field study.

Contribution

It presents the first field comparison of unlock journaling with traditional diaries and reminders, showing its benefits for in situ self-reporting.

Findings

Unlock journaling is less intrusive than reminders.

It significantly increases journaling frequency.

It provides equal or better timeliness in self-reporting.

Abstract

In situ self-report is widely used in human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and for assessment and intervention in health and wellness. Unfortunately, it remains limited by high burdens. We examine unlock journaling as an alternative. Specifically, we build upon recent work to introduce single slide unlock journaling gestures appropriate for health and wellness measures. We then present the first field study comparing unlock journaling with traditional diaries and notification based reminders in self report of health and wellness measures. We find unlock journaling is less intrusive than reminders, dramatically improves frequency of journaling, and can provide equal or better timeliness. Where appropriate to broader design needs, unlock journaling is thus an overall promising method for in situ self report.