Personal informatics for everyday life: How users without prior self-tracking experience engage with personal data

The spreading of devices and applications that allow people to collect personal information opens new opportunities for personal informatics. Although many of these tools are effectively used by motivated people to gain self-knowledge and some kind of change in their behaviors, by and large, most common users are unfamiliar with personal informatics and do not know its potentialities. To investigate how these users perceive and use self-tracking tools in everyday life, we conducted a diary study. We uncovered a series of problems that people experienced in tracking, managing, visualizing, and using their data. Starting from these issues we identified seven design strategies to better personal informatics applications and devices and overcome these critical points. Each design strategy is supported by a rationale, which draws on literature of varying research fields, and is exemplified by a user scenario.