Visualizing Bipolar Disorder
Tags
bipolar disorder, digital mental health, grounded visualization design, visual metaphors, personal informatics, self-tracking, participatory design
Research Team
Jaime Snyder (PI)
Liam Albright
Micheal Freeman
James Kitchen
Catie Lustig
Liz Murane
Nikita Nerukar
Justin Petelka
Steve Voida
Funding
Jaime Snyder (PI), “Visualizing Bipolar Disorder: Exploring the Representation of Personal Data in the Treatment of Serious Mental Illness,” Sponsored by the UW Royalty Research Fund (RRF, #65-6521). $34,766. 02/01/17—09/15/18.
Related Publications
Snyder, Jaime. 2020. “Visualizing Personal Rhythms: A Critical Visual Analysis of Mental Health in Flux.” In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 269–81. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357236.3395463.
Snyder, Jaime, Elizabeth Murnane, Caitie Lustig, and Stephen Voida. 2019. “Visually Encoding the Lived Experience of Bipolar Disorder.” In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–14. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300363.
Petelka, Justin, Lucy Van Kleunen, Liam Albright, Elizabeth Murnane, Stephen Voida, and Jaime Snyder. 2020. “Being (In)Visible: Privacy, Transparency, and Disclosure in the Self-Management of Bipolar Disorder.” In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–14. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376573.
Murnane, Elizabeth L., Tara G. Walker, Beck Tench, Stephen Voida, and Jaime Snyder. 2018. “Personal Informatics in Interpersonal Contexts: Towards the Design of Technology That Supports the Social Ecologies of Long-Term Mental Health Management.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2 (CSCW): 127:1-127:27. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274396.
Matthews, Mark, Elizabeth Murnane, and Jaime Snyder. 2017. “Quantifying the Changeable Self: The Role of Self-Tracking in Coming to Terms With and Managing Bipolar Disorder.” Human–Computer Interaction 32 (5–6): 413–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2017.1294983.
Matthews, Mark, Elizabeth Murnane, Jaime Snyder, Shion Guha, Pamara Chang, Gavin Doherty, and Geri Gay. 2017. “The Double-Edged Sword: A Mixed Methods Study of the Interplay between Bipolar Disorder and Technology Use.” Computers in Human Behavior 75 (October): 288–300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.05.009.
This study investigated the visual metaphors and images people with bipolar disorder associate with their condition in order to better understand how personal health data could be visualized in more meaningful ways, through apps or other forms of technology.
Through a series of interviews and participatory design activities with individuals currently under treatment for bipolar disorder, we developed the Grounded Visualization Design methodology to explore gaps, tensions, and intersections between traditional data visualization conventions used in many popular tracking tools and the visual metaphors and images used by patients to describe their mental health experiences. This study (1) supports patient-centered approaches to the long-term management of serious mental illnesses, (2) can inform the design of self-tracking tools for specialized audiences, and (3) provides insights into the role of visualization in shaping data-driven knowledge.