Know Thyself: A Theory of the Self for Personal Informatics

Abstract

Although Personal Informatics stresses the importance of “self”-awareness and “self”-knowledge in collecting personal data, a description of the “self,” to which all these knowledge endeavors are addressed, is missing in the current debate. In this article we first review how the different theoretical assumptions that currently inform the design of Personal Informatics tools fail to convey a convincing image of the self, which ought to be quantified by these technologies. We then move on to the outline of a theory of the self that may ground the current discourse in Personal Informatics. Building on this theoretical framework, we propose a set of design guidelines as its implications, which may drive the design of future self-tracking technologies. Finally, we outline a research agenda, organized around such guidelines, in the form of research questions to be addressed in the future.

Notes

¹ Justification for this position may be found, for example, in Bruner (1990), Guidano (1987, 1991), and Maturana and Varela (1980).

² Both knowledge and meaning are often socially construed and socially shared. This does not make them objective or less subjective, it only makes them intersubjective.

³ Hybrid recommender systems are a third kind, which combines the two previous methods.

⁴ For this reason, throughout the rest of the article we use the terms “possible selves” and “future selves” as synonyms.

⁵ We are assuming that social interactants aim and are able to be sincere and transparent: A discussion of more complex situations would fall outside the scope and the length of this article, but see, for example, Goffman (1959).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amon Rapp

Amon Rapp ([email protected]) is a human–computer interaction scientist with an interest in Personal Informatics, behavior change technologies, and games; he is a research fellow in the Computer Science Department of University of Torino. Maurizio Tirassa ([email protected]) is a cognitive scientist with an interest in psychological facets of technology use; he is a full professor of Work and Organizational Psychology in the Psychology Department of University of Torino.