FamilyBloom: Examining Ecologies of Collaboration in Family-Centered Health Tracking

Authors

• Lucas M. Silva, University of IowaFollow
• Aehong Min, University of California, IrvineFollow
• Evropi Stefanidi, TU WienFollow
• Franceli L. Cibrian, Chapman UniversityFollow
• Jesus A. Beltran, California State University, Los AngelesFollow
• Cassie Zeiler, University of California, IrvineFollow
• Sabrina E. B. Schuck, University of California, IrvineFollow
• Kimberley D. Lakes, University of California, RiversideFollow
• Gillian R. Hayes, University of California, IrvineFollow
• Daniel A. Epstein, University of California, IrvineFollow

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

4-13-2026

Abstract

Family health informatics tools can help support well-being with shared data tracking. Prior work typically focused on shared data review, but often in specific moments, like bedtime, or centered on caregiving of children or elderly members. To investigate how tracking can support mutual health collaboration between family members pervasively across daily contexts, we designed and deployed FamilyBloom, a glanceable smartwatch and home display system for mood and goal tracking. Twelve families with both neurotypical and ADHD members used FamilyBloom for three months on average. Our findings reveal how family-centered tracking created collaboration opportunities and tensions across multiple ecological systems: individual self-regulation, collaborations within family dynamics, involvement of care networks with varying trust levels, institutional school constraints and cultural stigma, and temporality of regular routines and crisis periods. We discuss an ecosystem-aware approach to family informatics, wherein design can attend to how families navigate multiple contexts while sustaining family-level collaboration.

Comments

This article was originally published in Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26). https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791277

Recommended Citation

Lucas M. Silva, Aehong Min, Evropi Stefanidi, Franceli L. Cibrian, Jesus A. Beltran, Cassie Zeiler, Sabrina Schuck, Kimberley D Lakes, Gillian R. Hayes, and Daniel A. Epstein. 2026. FamilyBloom: Examining Ecologies of Collaboration in Family-Centered Health Tracking. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26), April 13–17, 2026, Barcelona, Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 24 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791277

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.