This research is being conducted by Jian Zheng (jzheng23@umd.edu) at the University of Maryland, College Park. We are inviting you to participate in this research project because you are a qualified participant. The purpose of this research project is to understand how people spend their waiting time with a focus on whether and how they conduct any work-relevant activities.
There are no direct benefits from participating in this research. However, possible benefits include reflection on how you spend your time. We hope that, in the future, other people might benefit from this study through an improved understanding of how to make better use of their waiting time.
If you are interested please sign up here.
Please install ActivityWatch on your phone and computer. It will collect the active application name, window title, and URL if available, with the starting and ending times. It will not collect the text, image, or video within a file or webpage. You can end it manually whenever you want. At the end of the study, please send the data file to me (jzheng23@umd.edu). Before sending it you can view and edit the file to, e.g., delete any items you don't feel like sharing.
Windows
Download desktop version.
Install it. Keep the option "Start ActivityWatch when Windows starts" checked.
Install the Chrome extension. Pin it to the address bar.
Android
Open Google Play, search for ActivityWatch, and install it.
After the installation is finished, tap "Open".
The usage access interface should show up, tap on ActivityWatch and check "Permit usage access".
Check "I'm aware of ..." and wait for 10 seconds, then tap "OK".
If you wish to pause the tracking for a while, you can disable the watchers
Find the icon
Right-click on it
Go-to modules
Uncheck all the watchers
Don’t forget to enable them afterward by checking all the watchers (except rust)
Windows
Open Chrome
Click on ActivityWatch extension
Open WebUI
Open Raw data
Find the buckets with ID Aw-watcher-windows_username & Aw-watcher-web-chrome
Click on More
Select Export as JSON
Send the downloaded file to jzheng23@umd.edu
Android
Open ActivityWatch
Go to Raw data
Find Aw-watcher-android-test
Tap on More
Select Export as JSON
Your browser will show up, wait for the download to complete
Find downloads (Usually in Menu - Downloads)
Send the downloaded file to jzheng23@umd.edu
Windows
Settings, Apps (or Apps & Features), find ActivityWatch, uninstall
Android
The application could be uninstalled as other apps by long-pressing and then selecting "uninstall".
Please install WTA-ESM on your phone. It provides daily surveys about waiting activity. You will receive up to 3 reminders each day. You will get fully paid if you report three waiting-time activities each day. More than three times reporting will be appreciated by the research team but won’t lead to more payment.
The WTA-ESM could be installed in Google Play.
At the first run, you will be prompted to create a data file. Please tap "OK".
Once the file is created, please tap "Settings".
Please set up three reminders: you can either use the default time or set your own preferred time.
Once you are satisfied with the time, please tap "Set reminders".
You are good to go!
Please do an active report about what you are doing whenever you find yourself waiting for something (e.g., elevator, meals, app loading, downloading, and meeting) or someone (e.g., friends and family).
Tap "I am waiting for..." and a survey will show up.
Answer the questions and then tap "Submit". You can skip any questions you don't feel like answering. In answering the questions, you don't need to write complete sentences. So, instead of "I am waiting for a file to be downloaded", just write "downloading". Instead of "I am at home", just write "home".
You can also report some recent waiting-time activities that you have not reported.
Tap "I was waiting for..." and a survey will show up. It has essentially the same question set except an extra one asking "when did that waiting happen?"
Each day during the study, depending on how many active reports you have made, you may receive up to three reminders in the form of notifications asking "have you been waiting for something since the last report?"
Tap on the notification will lead you to the survey page, which is almost the same as the "I was waiting for..." page, except for an extra button "right now" after the question "when did that waiting happen?"
If you are to report some waiting activities that are happening after tapping the notification, tap "right now" and you will be led to the "I am waiting for..." page.
After each week during the study, you can disable the reminders by turning the reminder switch in "settings" to "off".
At the beginning of the second week of the study, please re-enable the reminders by the switch back "on".
Tap “SETTING”
Tap “SHARE”
Select your email app (e.g. Gmail)
Send it to jzheng23@umd.edu
The application could be uninstalled as other apps by long pressing and then select "uninstall".
Thank you for participating in this study.