SWiFT Seeing the Wood From the Trees: helping people make sense of their health data

The aim of the SWIFT project is to determine which visualisations of blood glucose-related data on mobile devices are most usable by people with insulin-dependent diabetes, to improve self-management. Such people are often advised to maintain a logbook to record glucose measurements, insulin doses and related information. Software exists for downloading and scrutinising such data, but some people find numerical data difficult to interpret. However, many people find visual data easier to understand. The question of which data visualisations would be most usable for selfmanagement is still open. This study will determine what people with diabetes and clinicians want to learn from their data, and interactive visualisations will be designed accordingly. Interaction allows the users to modify what they see and how they see it. The visualisations will be designed for small screens and tested through the development of a glucose tracking diary app. Some parameters that affect the condition are displayed in figure 1. The '?' indicates that there are open questions about which of these parameters will be of most value to users and how best to visualise them.