Day Re-construction: Understanding How College Students Manage Their Time Through Self-monitoring

Abstract

With a plethora of possibilities for new social experiences, activities, and other prospects, college students may find it challenging to balance their time. To facilitate their awareness of and reflection upon time expenditures regarding the three pillars of a balanced life: work, personal maintenance and leisure. We designed and evaluated a web app called LifeLogger. This application harnesses semi-automated, self-tracking, and visualization features to support awareness and reflection of time use. We invited 13 participants to interact with the prototype for a week, and followed up with semi-structured interviews to understand their experiences of the application. We find that LifeLogger increases participants awareness and encourages self-reflection on time use, which could facilitate participants in comprehend- ing their time expenditures. We conclude by discussing potential design strategies for time management.