From Sleep Scores to Self-Knowledge: Older Adults’ Experiences with Tracking Sleep Using the Oura Ring

Paper Title

From Sleep Scores to Self-Knowledge: Older Adults’ Experiences with Tracking Sleep Using the Oura Ring

Publication Info

• Topic area: Older adults' engagement with wearable sleep-tracking technologies.
• Keywords: Sleep tracking, older adults, Oura Ring, personal informatics, age-inclusive design, wearable technology, health data interpretation, age friction, calibration-oriented informatics, behavioural change.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing wearable health technologies, including sleep trackers, are predominantly designed for younger, tech-savvy users, leading to usability, interpretability, and engagement challenges for older adults. Misalignments in terminology, visualizations, and feedback mechanisms often reduce trust and sustained use among older populations.
• Significance: Sleep is critical for health and quality of life, particularly for older adults, who often experience fragmented sleep and underdiagnosed sleep disorders. Wearable devices like the Oura Ring offer potential for unobtrusive, long-term monitoring, but their effectiveness depends on meaningful engagement and age-appropriate design.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has focused on younger users, with limited understanding of how older adults interact with wearable health technologies. Studies highlight barriers such as low interpretability, lack of actionable feedback, and age-inappropriate benchmarks, leaving a gap in designing inclusive systems for older populations.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The study investigates older adults’ experiences with the Oura Ring for sleep tracking, focusing on how they interpret and engage with wearable-derived data over time. It introduces "calibration-oriented informatics" as a design paradigm prioritizing alignment with users' embodied experiences and age-specific needs.
• Novelty:
  1. Identification of "age friction" caused by youthful defaults in wearable design, leading to disengagement.
  2. Proposal of calibration-oriented informatics as an age-inclusive design framework.
  3. Exploration of older adults’ interpretive strategies, preferences for visualizations, and social engagement with sleep data.
  4. Insights into the socio-technical role of wearables in shaping health awareness, behaviour, and identity for older adults.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Mixed-method study with 20 older adults (aged 66–88) using the Oura Ring.
  • Phase 1: One-month diary study with daily entries and weekly interviews.
  • Phase 2: Follow-up interviews with 10 participants after 4–6 months of use.
  • Data collection included onboarding/offboarding interviews, TAM questionnaires, diary entries, and Oura Ring metrics.
  • Reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes related to data interpretation, trust, psychosocial factors, and behavioural impact.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Participants struggled with terms like "stress" and "readiness," which were misaligned with their mental models.
  • Visualizations (e.g., colour-coded charts) were preferred for quick interpretation, but inconsistencies in metrics (e.g., high readiness despite poor sleep) reduced trust.
  • TAM responses showed increased perceived usefulness of the ring for sleep monitoring (+15% for "extremely likely" to improve sleep quality).
  • Long-term engagement declined due to lack of actionable feedback and age-inappropriate benchmarks.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Highlights the need for age-specific design considerations, such as tailored language, configurable interfaces, and age-adjusted benchmarks, which are often missing in current wearable technologies.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Study involved 20 participants in Phase 1 and 10 in Phase 2, with data collected through diaries, interviews, and Oura Ring metrics.
  • TAM questionnaires assessed changes in perceived usefulness before and after the study.
  • Analysis focused on themes like data interpretation, behavioural impact, and long-term engagement.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Small, non-representative sample limited to healthy older adults.
  • Findings tied to the Oura Ring, a single commercial device.
  • Participants received the device for free, potentially influencing engagement.
  • Future work should explore diverse devices, longer usage durations, and integration with broader health ecosystems.

Summary

This study examines how older adults engage with wearable sleep-tracking technologies, using the Oura Ring as a case study. It identifies barriers such as misaligned terminology, lack of actionable feedback, and age-inappropriate benchmarks, which hinder sustained engagement. The study introduces "calibration-oriented informatics" as a design paradigm emphasizing alignment with users' embodied experiences and age-specific needs. Findings highlight the importance of clear language, configurable interfaces, and age-adjusted feedback to support meaningful engagement. These insights contribute to age-inclusive design principles for wearable health technologies, advancing the field of personal informatics for older populations.