Imagining the Future of Longitudinal HCI Studies

Automated data collection has a significant role in collecting reliable longitudinal data in human–computer interaction (HCI) studies that involve human participants. While objective data collection can be obtained by and mediated through personal informatics, subjective data is mostly collected through labour-intensive tools. The potential of sensor-embedded everyday objects as subjective data collection tools is underexplored. Hence, in this chapter, we investigate the use of such products for subjective data collection purposes in longitudinal studies. First, we demonstrate current practices on subjective data collection tools and examine the aforementioned research gap. Following that, we discuss the results of three discussion sessions in which we collected insights from six expert researchers on the enablers and barriers of using sensor-embedded everyday objects as subjective data collection tools. We present our insights with use-case scenarios to communicate what possible roles sensor-embedded everyday objects could have in collecting subjective data in future longitudinal HCI studies and discuss how they could be further developed within the field.