Examining Menstrual Tracking to Inform the Design of Personal Informatics Tools

Abstract

We consider why and how women track their menstrual cycles, examining their experiences to uncover design opportunities and extend the field's understanding of personal informatics tools. To understand menstrual cycle tracking practices, we collected and analyzed data from three sources: 2,000 reviews of popular menstrual tracking apps, a survey of 687 people, and follow-up interviews with 12 survey respondents. We find that women track their menstrual cycle for varied reasons that include remembering and predicting their period as well as informing conversations with healthcare providers. Participants described six methods of tracking their menstrual cycles, including use of technology, awareness of their premenstrual physiological states, and simply remembering. Although women find apps and calendars helpful, these methods are ineffective when predictions of future menstrual cycles are inaccurate. Designs can create feelings of exclusion for gender and sexual minorities. Existing apps also generally fail to consider life stages that women experience, including young adulthood, pregnancy, and menopause. Our findings encourage expanding the field's conceptions of personal informatics.

Flexible and Mindful Self-Tracking

“…Clinically-informed studies suggest that paper dairies are feasible and usable data collection tools [64], especially when tailored to chronic conditions and research settings [61]. Studies in HCI indicate that individuals prefer the flexibility and tangibility of paper notebooks over digital products, when technology appropriation is perceived as an effortful barrier, and when poor design causes critical incidents and does not meet security and privacy needs [3,23,33].…”

“…Congruent with the rise of consumer health technologies, HCI research has increasingly examined the use of personal informatics tools [2] involving physical activity [27,30], food intake [15,16], sleeping behaviour [52], productivity [13], mental wellness [34], menstrual cycles [23], disease progression [3] and care-giving [63]. Rooksby et al [15] characterise these self-tracking practices as 'lived' -enmeshed in everyday life -and identify overlapping selftracking styles, such as documentary tracking and diagnostic tracking.…”

“…Research has developed a detailed understanding of selftracking in different domains by individuals who use both self-tracking technologies and paper notebooks [3,20,23,45]. Recently, there has been a push to semiautomated [10] and flexible self-tracking [36] to overcome the limitations of current self-tracking technologies.…”

“…The use of paper journals remains common practice, as research studies within and beyond personal informatics suggest [3,23,26,33]. [7] exemplifies how organisation of, searching in, and reflecting on paper notebooks can be digitally supported.…”

User Experience of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Apps for Depression: An Analysis of App Functionality and User Reviews (Preprint)

“…As with other health apps (e.g. menstruation trackers [54]), they also need to ensure privacy: it was clear from the user comments that people shared their phones with others and thus would want to keep private the fact they use an app to support mental health. In exploring this area many lessons could be drawn from existing literature on behaviour change [21], health promotion [7] or medication adherence apps [43].…”