myAQM: Interfacing Portable Air Quality Monitor with the Apple Watch - An In-the-Wild Usability Study

The last decade witnessed the popularization of commercial smartwatches as personal health-tracking devices. This coincided with a deeper understanding of the health effects of ambient and indoor air pollution. Consequently, there is a growing interest in interfacing data from portable sensors with commercial smartwatches, allowing users to monitor the air whenever and wherever. In the real world, it remains insufficiently investigated how and through which modalities users benefit from smartwatch interfaces. To bridge this gap, we conducted a pioneering in-the-wild usability study with myAQM (N = 9). myAQM visualizes PM2.5 and CO2 data from a portable air quality monitor on different Apple Watch interfaces: the main application, complications (watch face’s widgets), and notifications. Our qualitative analysis showed that the Apple Watch interfaces provided glanceable data, omnipresent reminders of the surrounding air, and timely alerts of changes in air quality. Through these affordances, users developed a more acute understanding of the surrounding air and reduced self-exposure to bad air quality through certain behavioral changes, if circumstances permitted. Our findings support commercial smartwatches as a convenient and readily-accessible add-on for traditional smartphone interfaces in disseminating hyperlocal air quality data.