This paper presents a design study of the visualization interface to the Myant Skiin Connected Life App (Skiin), a family informatics application which will connect family members, friends, and caregivers, by engaging them together and enabling health and wellness-related data sharing and support. It is based on Myant’s highly accurate intelligent textiles garments which collect activity and related biomechanical data through knitted sensors on the garment. Our design seeks to deliver a seamless user experience between this complex of technologies through effective data presentation, visualization, and tool tips. One of Skiin’s differentiators is the provision of a communication overlay (the Aura) which cues users to view metrics data and engage in dialogue around its meaning. We undertook a comprehensive literature review and examination of related work that included personal informatics, mHealth applications, and family informatics – motivation and social communication, wellness standards for older adults, technology adoption by older adults, effective design, and visualization strategies to support aging individuals, their family, friends, and support team, and issues of privacy. We used iterative prototyping to build and revise the visualization interface. We discuss our visualization methods, detail the resulting Skiin application, our usability testing strategy which combines personas, Talk Aloud and SUS approaches, research outcomes, and next steps.
