Working Together in a PhamilySpace

Studies have shown that interpersonal relationships such as families and friends are an important source of support and encouragement to those who seek to engage in healthier habits. However, challenges related to geographic distance may hinder those relationships from fully collaborating and engaging in healthy living together. To explore this domain, we developed and deployed a lightweight photo-based application called PhamilySpace with a week-long intervention. Our goal is to examine family members' and friends' engagement and awareness on healthy behaviors while living apart. Our analysis of the semi-structured interviews, pre/post-intervention instruments, and application logs suggests three main benefits of interventions for health promotion in this context: (1) increased awareness on acts of health; (2) reciprocal sharing of health information supports social accountability over distance; and (3) positive dialogue around health enhances support on healthy living. By providing insights into distributed family/friends interactions and experiences with the application, we identify benefits, challenges, and opportunities for future design interventions that promote healthy behaviors.

[1]  Ann Blandford,et al.  HCI for health and wellbeing: Challenges and opportunities , 2019, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[2]  Daniel A. Epstein.  Personal informatics in everyday life , 2015, UbiComp/ISWC Adjunct.

[3]  R. Zajonc.  SOCIAL FACILITATION. , 1965, Science.

[4]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces , 1992, CSCW '92.

[5]  Steve Harrison,et al.  Family portals: connecting families through a multifamily media space , 2011, CHI.

[6]  Bert N. Uchino,et al.  The relationship between social support and physiological processes: a review with emphasis on underlying mechanisms and implications for health. , 1996, Psychological bulletin.

[7]  C. Fertman,et al.  Health Promotion Programs: From Theory to Practice , 2010 .

[8]  Debra Lauterbach,et al.  It's not that i don't have problems, i'm just not putting them on facebook: challenges and opportunities in using online social networks for health , 2011, CSCW.

[9]  Eric Baumer,et al.  Prescriptive persuasion and open-ended social awareness: expanding the design space of mobile health , 2012, CSCW.

[10]  D. Umberson,et al.  Family Relationships and Well-Being , 2017, Innovation in aging.

[11]  David W. McDonald,et al.  Goal-setting considerations for persuasive technologies that encourage physical activity , 2009, Persuasive '09.

[12]  Sarah Diefenbach,et al.  All You Need is Love: Current Strategies of Mediating Intimate Relationships through Technology , 2012, TCHI.

[13]  Kori Inkpen Quinn,et al.  SPARCS: exploring sharing suggestions to enhance family connectedness , 2008, CSCW.

[14]  Debra Lauterbach,et al.  Happier Together: Integrating a Wellness Application into a Social Network Site , 2010, PERSUASIVE.

[15]  Betsy van Dijk,et al.  Life changes, connection stays: photo sharing and social connectedness for people with special needs , 2010, ECCE.

[16]  R. Kessler,et al.  Measuring stress: A guide for health and social scientists. , 1995 .

[17]  Marianne Graves Petersen,et al.  Together Together: Combining Shared and Separate Activities in Designing Technology for Family Life , 2019, IDC.

[18]  Allison Druin,et al.  Shared family calendars: Promoting symmetry and accessibility , 2006, TCHI.

[19]  Mila Kingsbury,et al.  Friendship: An old concept with a new meaning? , 2013, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[20]  Sean A. Munson,et al.  Beyond Abandonment to Next Steps: Understanding and Designing for Life after Personal Informatics Tool Use , 2016, CHI.

[21]  Yuan Zhuang,et al.  TableChat: Mobile Food Journaling to Facilitate Family Support for Healthy Eating , 2018, Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact..

[22]  Kori Inkpen Quinn,et al.  Exploring communication and sharing between extended families , 2009, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[23]  Betsy van Dijk,et al.  Let's stay in touch: sharing photos for restoring social connectedness between rehabilitants, friends and family , 2009, Assets '09.

[24]  Frank Bentley,et al.  Promoting intergenerational communication through location-based asynchronous video communication , 2011, UbiComp '11.

[25]  Tiffany C. Veinot,et al.  Health information behavior in families: Supportive or irritating? , 2011, ASIST.

[26]  John Zimmerman,et al.  Designing for dynamic family structures: divorced families and interactive systems , 2010, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[27]  Silvia Lindtner,et al.  Fish'n'Steps: Encouraging Physical Activity with an Interactive Computer Game , 2006, UbiComp.

[28]  David Sun,et al.  Sensor-less sensing for affective computing and stress management technology , 2013, 2013 7th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare and Workshops.

[29]  Sergio F. Ochoa,et al.  It Takes at Least Two to Tango: Understanding the Cooperative Nature of Elderly Caregiving in Latin America , 2017, CSCW.

[30]  Katie A. Siek,et al.  Snack Buddy: Supporting Healthy Snacking in Low Socioeconomic Status Families , 2015, CSCW.

[31]  Susanne Boll,et al.  Identification and Classification of Usage Patterns in Long-Term Activity Tracking , 2017, CHI.

[32]  Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn,et al.  Connecting the family with awareness systems , 2007, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[33]  Sonja Pedell,et al.  "Out of sight, out of mind", investigating affective intergenerational communication over distance , 2016, OZCHI.

[34]  A. Bandura.  Health promotion from the perspective of social cognitive theory , 1998 .

[35]  Desney S. Tan,et al.  Toward technologies that support family reflections on health , 2009, GROUP.

[36]  C. Carver,et al.  Assessing coping strategies: a theoretically based approach. , 1989, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[37]  S. Shyam Sundar,et al.  Social networking in the aging context: Why older adults use or avoid Facebook , 2017, Telematics Informatics.

[38]  W. Velicer,et al.  The Transtheoretical Model of Health Behavior Change , 1997, American journal of health promotion : AJHP.

[39]  Elizabeth D. Mynatt,et al.  “Hunger Hurts but Starving Works”: Characterizing the Presentation of Eating Disorders Online , 2016, CSCW.

[40]  Frank Vetere,et al.  Supporting young children's communication with adult relatives across time zones , 2011, OZCHI.

[41]  Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed,et al.  Sensing stress network for social coping , 2014, CSCW Companion '14.

[42]  L. Festinger.  A Theory of Social Comparison Processes , 1954 .

[43]  Sean A. Munson,et al.  When Personal Tracking Becomes Social: Examining the Use of Instagram for Healthy Eating , 2017, CHI.

[44]  John M. Carroll,et al.  Supporting Effective Sharing of Health Information among Intergenerational Family Members , 2018, PervasiveHealth.

[45]  Hyun Jung Oh,et al.  Facebooking for health: An examination into the solicitation and effects of health-related social support on social networking sites , 2013, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[46]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  "almost touching": parent-child remote communication using the sharetable system , 2013, CSCW.

[47]  John C. Tang,et al.  Experiences2Go: sharing kids' activities outside the home with remote family members , 2013, CSCW.

[48]  Magy Seif El-Nasr,et al.  Storywell: Designing for Family Fitness App Motivation by Using Social Rewards and Reflection , 2020, CHI.

[49]  Carman Neustaedter,et al.  Exploring the diversity of families: designing technologies for the contemporary family life , 2013, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[50]  Sean A. Munson,et al.  Exploring goal-setting, rewards, self-monitoring, and sharing to motivate physical activity , 2012, 2012 6th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth) and Workshops.

[51]  B. Uchino,et al.  Social and emotional support and its implication for health , 2008, Current opinion in psychiatry.

[52]  Jason C. Yip,et al.  From Personal Informatics to Family Informatics: Understanding Family Practices around Health Monitoring , 2017, CSCW.

[53]  S. Petronio.  Balancing the Secrets of Private Disclosures , 2000 .

[54]  Walid A. Afifi,et al.  Avoidance among adolescents in conversations about their parents’ relationship: Applying the Theory of Motivated Information Management , 2009 .

[55]  Pearl A. Dykstra,et al.  The implications of today's family structures for support giving to older parents , 2008, Ageing and Society.

[56]  Jasmine Jones,et al.  Pinteresce: Exploring Reminiscence as an Incentive to Digital Reciprocity for Older Adults , 2015, CSCW Companion.

[57]  J. Hubley,et al.  Practical Health Promotion , 2008 .

[58]  John M. Carroll,et al.  PhamilyHealth: A Photo Sharing System for Intergenerational Family Collaboration on Health , 2018, CSCW Companion.

[59]  James A. Landay,et al.  Design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activity , 2006, CHI.

[60]  Andrea G. Parker,et al.  Reflective Informatics Through Family Storytelling: Self-discovering Physical Activity Predictors , 2017, CHI.

[61]  Konrad Tollmar,et al.  The power of mobile notifications to increase wellbeing logging behavior , 2013, CHI.

[62]  Carman Neustaedter,et al.  Intimacy in long-distance relationships over video chat , 2012, CHI.

[63]  Jenny Waycott,et al.  Captioned photographs in psychosocial aged care: relationship building and boundary work , 2014, CHI.

[64]  Rebecca E. Grinter,et al.  EatWell: sharing nutrition-related memories in a low-income community , 2008, CSCW.

[65]  Daniel A. Epstein,et al.  Supporting Caring among Intergenerational Family Members through Family Fitness Tracking , 2020, PervasiveHealth.

[66]  Inge Seiffe-Krenke.  Leaving home or still in the nest? Parent-child relationships and psychological health as predictors of different leaving home patterns. , 2006, Developmental psychology.

[67]  Andrea G. Parker,et al.  Spaceship Launch: Designing a Collaborative Exergame for Families , 2015, CSCW.

[68]  Kjeld Schmidt,et al.  The Problem with `Awareness': Introductory Remarks on `Awareness in CSCW' , 2002, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[69]  Jin-Liang Wang,et al.  The effects of Social Networking Site (SNS) use on college students' friendship and well-being , 2014, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[70]  Andrea G. Parker,et al.  Social Reflections on Fitness Tracking Data: A Study with Families in Low-SES Neighborhoods , 2019, CHI.

[71]  Sean A. Munson,et al.  Crumbs: Lightweight Daily Food Challenges to Promote Engagement and Mindfulness , 2016, CHI.

[72]  Evangelos Karapanos,et al.  How do we engage with activity trackers?: a longitudinal study of Habito , 2015, UbiComp.

[73]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  Co-constructing Family Memory: Understanding the Intergenerational Practices of Passing on Family Stories , 2018, CHI.

[74]  Chia-Fang Chung,et al.  Changing Roles and Contexts: Symbolic Interactionism in the Sharing of Food and Eating Practices between Remote, Intergenerational Family Members , 2020, Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact..

[75]  Virginia Braun,et al.  Successful Qualitative Research: A practical guide for beginners , 2013, QMiP Bulletin.

[76]  Sean A. Munson,et al.  PlanSourcing: Generating Behavior Change Plans with Friends and Crowds , 2016, CSCW.

[77]  Cécile Paris,et al.  Motivating reflection about health within the family: the use of goal setting and tailored feedback , 2011, User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction.

[78]  K. Wright.  Computer‐mediated support groups: An examination of relationships among social support, perceived stress, and coping strategies , 1999 .

[79]  A. Antonovsky.  The salutogenic model as a theory to guide health promotion , 1996 .

[80]  Pawel Wozniak,et al.  TickTockRun: Towards Enhancing Communication in Runner Families , 2016, CSCW '16 Companion.