An Interactive Dashboard for Visualization of Emotion Events and Environmental Contexts Based on Individual Surveys and GPS Traces

Keywords: Spatiotemporal Analysis, Visualization, Interactive Dashboard, Health Geography, GPS, EMA
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

Global Positioning System (GPS) based mobility data has increasingly been utilized by researchers from the psychological domain, in combination with Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMAs), to elucidate individuals' affects and behaviors in environmental contexts on a daily basis. However, there is a lack of a user-friendly tool for visualization that integrates data of individual surveys with GPS traces. To fill this gap, we have developed an interactive dashboard which enables psychology researchers to observe the spatiotemporal patterns of individual participants' emotions and behaviors cast in geographic contexts.

The dashboard consists of three major components: a file upload portal, a data explorer, and a map panel. In the file upload portal, users will be asked to upload datasets to be analyzed. In the data explorer, uploaded datasets can be previewed. The map panel consists of two parts. The upper part is a line graph that displays individual emotion changes and behavior outcomes. The lower part provides an all-in-one map view where users can create any combination of layers generated by built-in functionalities, such as trajectories, emotion events, and environmental contexts. These two parts are connected, allowing investigation within any selected time range. For demonstration purposes, sample datasets from an EMA survey have been incorporated.

This interactive dashboard will help psychologists understand survey data with everything only one-click away, and may contribute to clinical studies of psychology by offering an opportunity to obtain novel insights from a spatiotemporal perspective.