Mobile devices, including activity trackers and smartwatches, can help older adults monitor health parameters passively and unobtrusively. Most user interactions with small devices consist of brief glances at the time or notifications. Consuming information from small displays poses challenges, which have been seldom studied from the perspective of older users. In this paper, we worked with older adults towards creating health data visualizations for them for small devices. We conducted a mixed-methods study with 30 older adults, in which we (1) conducted group discussions to understand participants’ opinions, (2) measured times taken to interpret health data visualizations with and without progress information, (3) measured how much information they could manage to see during brief glances. When data was visualized without progress indicators, participants took less time to understand the data and made fewer errors. Participants preferred health data visualizations that featured peaceful, and positive pictorial representations. We present design opportunities for older adults’ data visualizations in small devices.

Displaying the information collected by mobile health technologies remains a challenge, especially when considering representation of health data for older adults - i.e., where and how to display data captured by health devices. We focus on an underrepresented group in HCI research: older adults in the global south, specifically in Chile and Ecuador. We studied the opinions of a group of 18 older adults on health data representation through interviews and remote co-design practices, encouraging them to imagine representations of health data through a presentation of personal objects. They imagined representations of health data in analog formats, where contextual information would be included. Visualization designs can be integrated into objects that older adults use frequently or are close to them. This study contributes design ideas on representations of health data for older adults in the global south and reflections on how to engage this population in remote co-design activities.