Visualizing information on watch faces: A survey with smartwatch users

TL;DR

This survey investigates how smartwatch users visualize data on watch faces, revealing preferences for health data and icon-text representations, and identifies opportunities for improved visualization techniques.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into current smartwatch data visualization practices and highlights gaps and opportunities for future visualization research.

Findings

Health & fitness data are most commonly displayed.

Icons with text are the predominant visualization type.

Opportunities exist for new visualization methods on smartwatches.

Abstract

People increasingly wear smartwatches that can track a wide variety of data. However, it is currently unknown which data people consume and how it is visualized. To better ground research on smartwatch visualization, it is important to understand the current use of these representation types on smartwatches, and to identify missed visualization opportunities. We present the findings of a survey with 237 smartwatch wearers, and assess the types of data and representations commonly displayed on watch faces. We found a predominant display of health & fitness data, with icons accompanied by text being the most frequent representation type. Combining these results with a further analysis of online searches of watch faces and the data tracked on smartwatches that are not commonly visualized, we discuss opportunities for visualization research.