The future of looking back

For this week I would like to review a paper by Elsden et. al titled “A Quantified Past: Towards Design for Remembering with Personal Informatics” which focuses on, what the author called “the future of looking back” and “the fate of digital traces created by personal informatics”

In this paper the authors aim to, first, discuss how the users encounter and manage the huge amount of their personal historical data. Secondly, to understand the experience with and the role of the personal informatics tools in changing behaviour in addition to their lifelong use rather than temporary use. Finally, to explore and define characteristics for ‘quantified past’.

The main argument in the paper is that personal informatics tools sense and record data in a different way from other media or human memory, thus these tools have a novel role in creating new data in addition presenting past data. Therefore, this study is situated in two fields of research, memory and personal informatics.

First, the technologies of memory usually aim to captures the user’s life, such as the SenseCam and wearable automatic camera. However, there has been a call for lifelogging systems to widen the range of implication of these technologies rather than being exclusive to capturing. In addressing this call, there has been little work done and a lack of consideration for remembering with quantitative or self tracking data. Thus, the authors aim to suggest the use of personal informatics for data to be personally archived beyond their everyday use in order to create novel digital records that could play a significant role in remembering the user’s past

Secondly, in personal informatics literature, according to the authors, there is a usually a focus on technological challenges whereas there is a need to recognize the roles played by personal informatics, especially, in the long term. Thus the authors claim that there has been little research on how the users encounter and manage the huge amount of their personal historical data.

The methodology used in this study was qualitative where participants where interviewed and asked to describe their historical data and what it is about. For the data analysis, an IPA approach was adopted to understand participants’ sense making.

The findings of the study described three aspects: how participants encountered their past, how they made meaning of historical data and how they experienced remembering with personal informatics. In encountering their past, some participants had not ‘properly’ looked back at their historical data, whereas others admitted checking the historical data just before the interview. When it comes to making meaning of their data, many participants found it difficult to define a specific purpose of storing their data for future use despite the fact that they take so much care of it. Additionally, editing and sharing their data is not common although they would sometimes share or edit just right after capturing. When experienced remembering through personal informatics, there was a tension for participants between what they remembered and what was recorded.

Finally, the authors identified six characteristics of quantified past which are assumed to set the boundaries of personal informatics. First, passive, third-party recording which is always on and doesn’t require much user input. Second, quantitative and objective that describe accurate data. Third, removed from the past-as-remembered and different from human memory. Fourth, ego-centric, where the focus is on the user’s abstract data and actions. Fifth, subject to abstraction, reduction and commensuration rather than being within a context and lived experience. Sixth, amorphous and can take different forms and definitions

 

There are a couple of things I would like comment on and highlight in this paper. First, throughout reading the paper I was wondering what exactly ‘quantified’ past is. That is, what is considered to be a “quantified”? And whether every digital thing is considered a tool for capturing and storing quantified past (social media, mementos, photos and maps?). Also, there were a couple of examples of tools and apps discussed in the paper without explaining their functionalities and what make them tools for quantified past such as Misfit and Moves.

Then, the participants were given £10 shopping voucher to be recruited which might have affected the accuracy of data, especially that some participant mentioned looking at the data just before the interview, maybe to do better in the interview. Also, when asked to describe historical data (up to 3 years), participants might have explained them differently from their real context as the present context might have affected their perspective on their own historical data.

Additionally, according to the study it seems that people do not use, edit or share their historical data and even some of them struggled to define the future purpose of these data, which might make us wonder whether these data are kept in archives without actual use or impacts. The findings however explained that participant could recall some events through these tools but did not mention the impacts of this remembering.

The characteristics defined by the authors seem like the downsides of personal informatics which may be contradictory with what was expected before conducting the study.

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This paper made me rethink the real impacts of using personal informatics. We store huge amounts of data every day whether or not we deliberately want to track our activities. Yet, most of these data, as the study showed, are not actually used. On the other hand, apps that do not apply personal informatics “such as Snapchat”, may be as successful as other apps that use personal informatics, nevertheless people would still take “screen shots” but would they really use them ? However, I still believe that personal informatics could be well presented and used in some specific and purposeful aspects, e.g steps counts and food intake.

 

I chose a paper titled “BinCam: Waste Logging for Behavioral Change” by Anja Thieme et. al

The BinCam is an example of a personal informatics system designed to raise awareness and change behavior related to food waste and recycling. This project as well represents the concept of “environmental activism” where activists attempt to ‘push’ for the changes in their communities

 

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2208394&CFID=733807645&CFTOKEN=53275336