Design premise and diary study exploring felt senses as data for self-reflection

Abstract

While mobile and wearable applications leverage biosensing and self-tracking technologies to promote healthy lifestyles through data-based self-reflection, there have been criticisms that they perpetuate the dualistic view that separates mind and body. We examine theoretical premises and design approaches for self-reflection using personal data, and compare them with self-reflection accounts collected from a diary study, in which participants are encouraged to reflect through Focusing on their felt sensations. Based on the analysis of how participants notice, express, question, and respond to their felt senses, we investigate how self-awareness and self-knowledge can be derived from elusive felt sensations and expand the scope of personal data and design for self-reflection. Our findings reveal the gap between theory and practice to design for self-reflection at the limits of biosensing and self-tracking applications, and lead to alternative design propositions for harnessing human senses as personal data for self-reflection.

Keywords:

• self-reflection
• self-knowledge
• personal data
• felt sense
• design for self-reflection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heekyoung Jung

Heekyoung Jung is an Associate Professor of Interaction Design in the School of Design at University of Cincinnati. She earned her BS and MS in Industrial Design at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and completed her PhD in Human-Computer Interaction Design at Indiana University Bloomington. She specializes in User Interface, Interaction and Experience Design of information and product systems, and conducts practice-based, reflective, and exploratory design studies to understand and augment human experience with emerging technologies. She has worked on industry and academic collaborative projects to design information and communication systems for workplace wellbeing at warehouse and airport, patient data registry and visualization, and mobile and wearable self-care.