Envisioning Mobile Data Visualization Libraries for Digital Health

TL;DR

This paper advocates for specialized mobile health data visualization libraries to improve visualization quality, consistency, and interpretability in mHealth applications, addressing current limitations of general-purpose tools.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of dedicated mobile health visualization libraries with key design features to enhance health data representation on small screens.

Findings

Current libraries lack health-specific semantics like thresholds and goals.

Custom solutions are often inconsistent and hard to interpret.

Dedicated libraries can promote consistency and accessibility.

Abstract

Mobile health (mHealth) applications support health management through rich data collection and self-reflection, yet the quality of their visualizations varies widely. A key limitation is the suboptimal design of visualizations for small-screen devices. We argue that this gap is partly driven by a lack of specialized developer tools. Existing libraries primarily target desktop or general-purpose mobile use, providing limited support for health-specific semantics such as normal ranges, thresholds, and goals. As a result, developers often resort to custom solutions that are inconsistent or hard to interpret. We therefore advocate for dedicated mobile visualization libraries tailored to personal health data and mobile contexts, and discuss key design considerations including intelligent defaults, built-in health annotations, and fluid interactions. Such libraries can lower barriers, promote consistency, and enable more accessible and interpretable mHealth applications.