A Quantified Past: Toward Design for Remembering With Personal Informatics

Abstract

Authors' Mini-bios:Chris Elsden (c.r.elsden@ncl.ac.uk, http://di.ncl.ac.uk) is an interaction design researcher with an interest in memory-related technologies and the experience-centred design of personal informatics; he is a Ph.D student at Open Lab in the School of Computer Science at Newcastle University. David S. Kirk (david.kirk@ncl.ac.uk) is a psychologist with an interest in the human-centred design of memory-related technologies; he is a Reader in Cultural Computing at Open Lab in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University.Abigail C. Durrant (abigail.durrant@ncl.ac.uk, http://di.ncl.ac.uk) is an interaction design researcher with a longstanding interest in how digital technologies enable and constrain expressions of identity; she is a Leverhulme Fellow at Open Lab in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University. AbstractThis paper questions how people will interact with a 'Quantified Past' -the growing historical record generated by the increasing use of sensor-based technologies and in particular, personal informatics tools. In a qualitative study, we interviewed 15 long-term users of different self-tracking tools about how they encountered, and made meaning from historical data they had collected. Our findings highlight that even if few people are self-tracking as a form of deliberate lifelogging, many of them generate data and records that become meaningful digital possessions. These records are revealing of many aspects of people's lives. Through considerable rhetorical data-work, people can appropriate such records to form highly personal accounts of their pasts. We use our findings to identify six characteristics of a quantified past and map an emerging design space for the longterm and retrospective use of personal informatics. Principally, we propose that design should seek to support people in making account of their data, and guard against the assumption that more, or 'better', data will be able to do this for them. To this end, we speculate on design opportunities and challenges for experiencing, curating and sharing historical personal data in new ways.

The mundane experience of everyday calorie trackers: Beyond the metaphor of Quantified Self

“…When asked to look at the extracts of food diaries our participants often did engage in 'data-work' (Elsden et al, 2015), i.e., they explained their food choices and described the background for their choices. However, as the quotes show, looking back at their past data was not something they normally did.…”

Personal Informatics, Self-Insight, and Behavior Change: A Critical Review of Current Literature

“…We refer to this idea as the self-improvement hypothesis of PI. Although there are exceptions (notably life-logging and other recollection-and selfdocumentation-focused approaches, e.g., Elsden & Kirk, 2014), the self-improvement hypothesis seems to represent the dominant way of thinking about PI and the prevailing intention in designing such systems (see, e.g., Epstein, Ping, Fogarty, & Munson, 2015 ;Li, Dey, & Forlizzi, 2010), as well as the most common reason for users to adopt such systems (Choe, Lee, Lee, Pratt, & Kientz, 2014;Epstein et al, 2015;Li et al, 2010;Whooley, Ploderer, & Gray, 2014).…”

Beyond Personal Informatics

“…Critically, this means working through the implications of PI, beyond their immediate utility -be it behaviour change, health or energy monitoring. For example, recent work questions the future uses of historical quantitative data as personal heritage [1,2]. Beyond HCI, sociologists have raised concerns for the potentially exploitative or coercive use of PI [10].…”

“…As personal informatics tools become embedded and networked, and personal circumstances change, what alternative trajectories of data could design support, beyond Li et al's [5] five-stage model? Elsden et al [2] question how quantitative PI data mediates remembering of the past, while Dong et al [1] consider the fate of data from a Nest thermostat for something as enduring as a house. Can personal informatics data gradually become part of a meaningful biography?…”