Research // Ian Li

Personal Informatics is a class of applications that help people collect personally relevant information for the purpose of self-reflection and gaining self-knowledge. My research uses Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methods to explore the design, development, and evaluation of personal informatics systems to improve how people collect and reflect on their personal information.

My Projects

IMPACT

IMPACT, Improving and Motivating Physical Activity using ContexT, is a system that monitors and informs users about their physical activity and the context in which the activities happen. The system shows real-time information on a phone interface and historical information on a desktop and online interface. By contextualizing physical activity, the system increases users' awareness of their physical activity.

local

Ian Li, Anind K. Dey, and Jodi Forlizzi. Using Contextual Information to Improve Awareness of Physical Activity. Engaging Data 2009, Boston, MA, 2009.

local

Ian Li, Anind K. Dey, and Jodi Forlizzi. Monitoring and Feedback to Increase Awareness of Exercise Activities. Ubicomp 2005 Workshop on Monitoring, Measuring, and Motivating Exercise: Ubiquitous Computing to Support Physical Fitness, Tokyo, Japan, 2005.

ES+Feedback

ES+Feedback extends the experience sampling method by providing feedback/visualizations of the users' collected responses. During a one month study of the method with 25 participants, we found that participants who saw visualizations maintained the same level of participation, while those who didn't see visualizations decreased.

local
acm

Gary Hsieh, Ian Li, Anind Dey, Jodi Forlizzi, and Scott Hudson. Using Visualizations to Increase Compliance in Experience Sampling. Ubicomp 2008, Seoul, Korea, 2008, pp. 164-167.

ES+Feedback screenshot

My Agent as Myself

My Agent as Myself studies what happens when users interact with embodied conversational agents that look like them. Would users follow the agents' advice? Users in the study created faces for agents, one that resembled them and one that is suitable for providing feedback. We found when someone else created the faces, users listened more to faces that resembled them. However, when users created the faces, they listened less to their own face.

local
acm

Ian Li, Jodi Forlizzi, Anind Dey, and Sara Kiesler. My Agent as Myself or Another: Effects on Credibility and Listening to Advice. DPPI 2007, Helsinki, Finland, 2007, pp. 194-208.

local

Ian Li, Jodi Forlizzi, Anind Dey, and Sara Kiesler. When the Interface is the User's Face: Ideas for Research and Applications. CHI 2006 Workshop on HCI and the Face, Montreal, Canada, 2006.

My Agent As Myself screenshot

Grafitter

Grafitter facilitates collection of personal information by leveraging people's everyday use of Twitter. Users can explore their Twitter updates for patterns and trends using Grafitter visualizations.

local
acm

Ian Li, Anind Dey, and Jodi Forlizzi. Grafitter: Leveraging Social Media for Self-Reflection. Crossroads, 16(2), December 2009, pp. 12-13.

MoodJam

MoodJam is a website that allows users to record their moods and share them with friends and family. Users record their moods with words and color combinations, which are visualized as color strips. The site serves as a mood diary for users to reflect on trends of their moods and on colors they associate with specific moods. The site also serves as an awareness tool for users to keep in touch with friends and family.

Office Activity Awareness

Keeping track of one's activities detracts from actual work, but awareness of activities can help in managing productivity. I created a system that tracks activities around the work table and correlated them with self-reported measurements of productivity.

Visit the project website for more information.