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CHI '26 · Honorable mention · full-paper review · confidence medium-high

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

Aneesha Singh , Minsi Song , Stella Loukeri Woestman , Jiratchaya Ongsricharoenporn , Yasemin Gunal , Bran Knowles , Ewan Soubutts , Yvonne Rogers

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This is a solid qualitative CHI paper that earns its honorable mention through a careful, well-scoped reframing of older-adult sleep tracking. The main contribution is not a new device or algorithm, but a persuasive account of why youthful defaults in wearable feedback can misfit older adults’ lived experience and engagement patterns.

Axes Lens

Rare contribution shape, typical evidence profile. The point here is not a score. It is to show what kind of claim the paper makes, and whether the evidence pattern is unusual or baseline in this 268 -review set.

Review Summary

This paper’s strength is that it takes a familiar CHI topic—personal informatics and sleep tracking—and shows that the central problem for older adults is not merely access to data, but the fit between data presentation and lived experience. The authors’ notion of “age friction” is a useful descriptive concept: terminology, tone, and benchmarks can quietly assume youthful norms, and that assumption can produce doubt, shame, or disengagement rather than insight. That is a meaningful departure from the common-sense story that more feedback automatically improves self-management. The paper’s novelty is primarily conceptual and empirical: it proposes “calibration-oriented informatics” as a lens for understanding intermittent, situated engagement with wearable sleep data, and it grounds that lens in a one-month diary study with 20 participants plus follow-up interviews with 10 participants after roughly four months of use. The evidence is credible for a qualitative contribution, but it remains bounded by the specific device and sample. I would not read it as establishing broad prevalence or causal mechanisms; instead, it offers a well-argued interpretation of how older adults make sense of sleep scores, when they trust them, and when they reject them. The limitations are appropriately important: the Oura Ring’s particular app affordances matter, the sample is small and not representative, and the study does not fully cover contextual factors such as caregiving, privacy, or accessibility needs. Overall, this is a strong CHI paper because it combines a clear empirical basis with a conceptually useful reframing that should travel well within age-inclusive personal informatics discussions, while still being careful about scope.

What Changed

Canon before

Prior CHI work on sleep wearables and personal informatics has often emphasized optimization, self-tracking, and actionable feedback for users assumed to be comfortable with app metrics, numerical benchmarks, and continuous engagement. This paper shifts attention to older adults and to the fit between wearable feedback and lived experience.

Departure from common sense

The paper argues that the main issue is not simply whether older adults can understand sleep metrics, but that terminology, tone, and benchmarks can encode youthful norms and create “age friction,” leading to doubt, shame, or abandonment instead of straightforward uptake.

Actual novelty

The paper’s novelty is a qualitative reframing of older-adult sleep tracking as intermittent, situated, and calibration-oriented rather than linear optimization. It proposes “calibration-oriented informatics” as an age-inclusive lens for understanding when wearable feedback aligns with embodied experience and age-appropriate baselines.

Evidence

Evidence comes from a one-month diary study with 20 older adults and follow-up interviews with 10 participants after about four months of Oura Ring use. The paper reports recurring tensions around app language, benchmarks, and feedback interpretation, and uses these observations to motivate the concepts of age friction and calibration-oriented informatics. The claims are grounded in qualitative accounts rather than experimental comparison.

Limits

Method limits

The study is qualitative and based on a single commercial wearable, so it cannot isolate causal effects of specific interface features or establish general prevalence. The sample is small and not representative, and the evidence is interpretive rather than comparative.

Deployment limits

The findings are most directly applicable to older adults using consumer sleep wearables with app-based metrics and explanatory text. Transfer to other devices, populations, or contexts with different sensing, feedback, or interaction models should be cautious.

Boundary conditions

The paper’s framing depends on older adults’ embodied sleep experiences and on wearable systems that present numerical scores, benchmarks, and written interpretations. It is less certain for users with different health goals, different levels of digital comfort, or devices that do not foreground score-based feedback.

Manual check: no

Position in field

This work contributes to CHI’s personal informatics and aging literature by shifting the focus from generic usability to age-fit in self-tracking feedback. It is best read as a conceptual and empirical reframing of sleep wearables for older adults, rather than as a technical system contribution.

Abstract

As people age, sleep often becomes lighter, more fragmented, and a source of increasing concern. Smart rings, like Oura, offer a discreet and comfortable means of supporting sleep tracking, yet it remains unclear how older adults engage with the sleep-related insights they provide. Our research investigates how older adults engage with wearable-derived physiological and behavioural sleep data, the barriers they encounter in understanding health metrics, and the ways these technologies influence self-perception and wellbeing practices. We report findings from a one-month diary study (n=20) and follow-up interviews (n=10) after around four months of ring use. Participants reflected on the meanings they attributed to app-based metrics, and whether such feedback felt useful, confusing, or intrusive, revealing misalignments with youthful defaults that negatively impacted engagement. We explore this in terms of "age friction" and discuss opportunities for more age-inclusive wearable technologies that promote meaningful engagement with personal health and wellbeing data.