A Study on Activity Visualization for Smart Watches

TL;DR

This study surveys existing activity visualizations on smartwatches and user preferences, highlighting the popularity of radial bar charts and the influence of familiarity on user choices, providing insights for future design improvements.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive survey of current smartwatch activity visualizations and user preferences, informing better design strategies for future visualization tools.

Findings

Radial bar charts are the most popular visualization type.

User preferences are influenced by familiarity with visualization types.

Survey results provide guidance for designing effective smartwatch activity displays.

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of visualization to display activity data on smartwatches by surveying the data visual presentations proposed by 80 smartwatch models currently available on the Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com and, later, surveying the preferences of 41 users concerning these visualizations. The results show that despite radial bar charts are the most popular visualization for activity data on smartwatches, the users' preferences might be influenced by their familiarity with these charts. These findings from this survey will be valuable for designers, developers, and researchers who are interested in creating innovative and effective solutions for activity visualization on smartwatches.