Design and Evaluation of a Power Wheelchair-based Self-tracking System to Prevent Pressure Ulcers

Self-tracking technologies empower people to build self-knowledge and insights across many domains and individual user contexts. However, individuals with severe motor disabilities are largely excluded from personal informatics systems. To bridge this gap, we designed and developed a first-of-a-kind power wheelchair (PWC) based multi-modal self-tracking system to support individuals with a recent spinal cord injury to track their pressure reliefs---a very frequent self-care activity to prevent pressure ulcers. We deployed this system with nine inpatient participants of a rehabilitation hospital and qualitatively evaluated the feasibility through their interactions with audio, visual, and haptic reminder modalities through observations and interviews. Our deployment and evaluation demonstrate the feasibility of creating chairable self-tracking systems to help facilitate independence and self-awareness of their self-care activity and the potential for personal informatics systems to be effectively designed so that they are useful for this population.