EmoVis: exploring data-enabled analogue journaling to promote self-reflection for mental wellness among college students

Xipei Ren, Xiaoyu Zhang, Renyao Zou, Ran Yan and Bin Yu

Behaviour and Information Technology, 2025, vol. 44, issue 4, 859-881

Abstract: College students are known to face many stressors, making them one of the most vulnerable groups to mental disorders. To tackle such an issue, this paper presents a design study that investigated data-enabled analogue journaling (DEAJ) to help college students improve their mental wellness through paper-based self-reflection aided by automatic self-tracking. Specifically, based on several design iterations we developed a DEAJ tool, called EmoVis, which could generate a printed visualisation based on daily physiological data and event tags to support doodling or structured writing in analogue journaling for everyday stress management. We conducted a six-day mixed methods field study with 32 college students to evaluate the effectiveness and user experience of EmoVis. Results suggested that EmoVis can significantly improve the engagement and need for self-reflection due to context-based reflection and data-enabled exploratory journaling. Furthermore, the doodling canvas was experienced as a joyful tool for mindfulness and creative DEAJ, while reflecting with a writing template was perceived as efficient. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of DEAJ approaches for daily stress coping in students’ college life.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2024.2349182

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