SleepTight: Low-burden, Self-monitoring Technology for Capturing and Reflecting on Sleep Behaviors

Manual tracking of health behaviors affords many benefits, including increased awareness and engagement. However, the capture burden makes long-term manual tracking challenging. In this study on sleep tracking, we examine ways to reduce the capture burden of manual tracking while leveraging its benefits. We report on the design and evaluation of SleepTight, a low-burden, self-monitoring tool that leverages the Android’s widgets both to reduce the capture burden and to improve access to information. Through a four-week deployment study (N = 22), we found that participants who used SleepTight with the widgets enabled had a higher sleep diary compliance rate (92%) than participants who used SleepTight without the widgets (73%). In addition, the widgets improved information access and encouraged self-reflection. We discuss how to leverage widgets to help people collect more data and improve access to information, and more broadly, how to design successful manual self-monitoring tools that support self-reflection.