Abstract
Communicating uncertainty has been shown to provide positive effects on user understanding and decision-making. Surprisingly however, most personal health tracking applications fail to disclose the accuracy of their measurements and predictions. In the case of fertility tracking applications (FTAs), inaccurate predictions have already led to numerous unwanted pregnancies and law suits. However, integrating uncertainty into FTAs is challenging: Prediction accuracy is hard to understand and communicate, and its effect on users' trust and behavior is not well understood. We created a prototype for uncertainty visualizations for FTAs and evaluated it in a four-week field study with real users and their own data (N=9). Our results uncover far-reaching effects of communicating uncertainty: For example, users interpreted prediction accuracy as a proxy for their cycle health and as a security indicator for contraception. Displaying predicted and detected fertile phases next to each other helped users to understand uncertainty without negative emotional effects.
| Item Type: | Journal article |
|---|---|
| Faculties: | Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics > Computer Science |
| Subjects: | 000 Computer science, information and general works > 004 Data processing computer science |
| Language: | English |
| Item ID: | 82304 |
| Date Deposited: | 15. Dec 2021 15:01 |
| Last Modified: | 15. Dec 2021 15:01 |
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