research-article

What do Teens Make of Personal Informatics?: Young People's Responses to Self-Tracking Practices for Self-Determined Motives

Authors:

Kyrill Potapov,

Asimina Vasalou,

Paul MarshallAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Article No.: 356, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445239

Published: 07 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Personal informatics (PI) technologies allow users to collect data about aspects of their lifestyle like mood or step count. Though teens increasingly encounter and use such technologies, little is known about how they ascribe meaning to their own PI activities. We report a qualitative study of the PI experiences of eighteen teens (aged 14 – 17). Following a learning phase focused on interpreting PI data, participants chose a personal goal that interested them and a PI tool to track it for 4-8 weeks in everyday contexts. Participants proved to be competent, flexible users of PI tools, tracking a range of meaningful life factors, from ‘worries’ to ‘exercise’; they valued learning about ‘natural patterns’ in their lives and were motivated to manage their emotions and evaluate whether they were doing the right thing. Our findings contribute to understanding how young people can engage in appropriation and interpretation of PI data – suggesting opportunities for educational interventions and design.

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What do Teens Make of Personal Informatics?: Young People's Responses to Self-Tracking Practices for Self-Determined Motives

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2021

10862 pages

ISBN:9781450380966

DOI:10.1145/3411764

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Yoshifumi Kitamura
Tohoku University, Japan
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University of New South Wales, Australia
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The University of Tokyo, Japan
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Published: 07 May 2021

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661558
Kolovson SSo SMunson S(2024)Using Speculative Design to Understand Preferred Futures for the Design and Use of Tracking Data in U.S. College Sport TeamsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36410288:CSCW1(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
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