4:15pm – Student Lightning Talks

Sleep Tracking for Wimps: Designing a Human-Centred Sleep Data Visualisation

Sleep Tracking for Wimps critiques how contemporary sleep-tracking technologies turn even sleep into a site of productivity and self-optimisation. Sleep trackers often reduce rest to scores and performance metrics, which can have emotional consequences for users and diminish the lived, embodied experience of sleep. Drawing on autoethnography, data humanism and user research, this project presents an alternative: a human-centred approach to visualising sleep data that resists numerical authority and makes space for context, subjectivity and imperfection. It asks, what might personal informatics look like if it were designed outside the logics of self-optimisation?

About the speaker:

Apollo is a researcher in data visualisation and human–computer interaction. He recently graduated from the MSc Human-Computer Interaction Design programme at City St George’s, University of London, and now works on the Dara project at City St George’s, exploring inclusive data visualisation for human-centred decision-making. His research interests include narrative visualisation, data humanism, and participatory approaches to interactive system design.