Abstract
Everyday, people generate lots of personal data. Driven by the increasing use of online services and widespread adoption of smartphones (owned by 68% of U.S. residents; Anderson, 2015), personal data take many forms, including communications (e.g., e-mail, SMS, Facebook), plans and coordination (e.g., calendars, TripIt, to-do lists), entertainment consumption (e.g., YouTube, Spotify, Netflix), finances (e.g., banking, Amazon, eBay), activities (e.g., steps, runs, check-ins), and even health care (e.g., doctor visits, medications, heart rate). Collectively, these data provide a highly detailed description of an individual. Personal data afford the opportunity for many new kinds of applications that might improve people’s lives through deep personalization, tools to manage personal well-being, and services that support identity construction. However, developers currently encounter challenges working with personal data due to its fragmentation across services. This article evaluates the landscape of personal data, including the systemic forces that created current fragmented collections of data and the process required for integrating data from across services into an application. It details challenges the fragmented ecosystem imposes. Finally, it contributes Phenom, an experimental system that addresses these challenges, making it easier to develop applications that access personal data and providing users with greater control over how their data are used.
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Jason Wiese
Jason Wiese ([email protected]) is a computer scientist. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah.
Sauvik Das
Sauvik Das ([email protected]) is a computer scientist. He is a Doctoral Candidate in the Human–Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Jason I. Hong
Jason I. Hong ([email protected]) is a computer scientist. He is an Associate Professor in the Human–Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
John Zimmerman
John Zimmerman ([email protected]) is a design researcher. He is an Associate Professor in the Human–Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.