Student Receptiveness to Circadian-Aware AI-Driven Scheduling

Circadian rhythm alignment plays a crucial role in our health and performance, yet most scheduling tools do not take it into account. College students, in particular, are affected by circadian misalignment due to their social and academic commitments. This paper investigates the desirability of an AIdriven scheduling application optimized for circadian rhythm alignment for students. Our initial interviews and observation of using GenAI tools with 16 undergraduate student participants indicated that while $81.2 \%$ of them use AI daily, only $12.5 \%$ utilize it for scheduling purposes. We further designed prototypes of an LLM-based scheduling application with varying levels of circadian awareness and evaluated their usefulness and desirability with 102 participants. Overwhelmed participants found the prototypes less helpful than those struggling with time management and exhaustion. However, our results indicate that students would prefer a personalized circadian-aware AI scheduler. This preference offers valuable insights for designing future circadian-aligned AI applications.