Data Engagement Reconsidered: A Study of Automatic Stress Tracking Technology in Use
This work addresses the issue of ineffective stress management for users of wearable or mobile tracking technologies, but it is incremental as it builds on existing self-tracking research by focusing on data engagement practices.
The paper tackles the problem of limited understanding of how automatic stress-tracking technologies are used in everyday life by conducting an empirical study with 17 users in China, identifying three key challenges: lack of immediate awareness, pre-required knowledge, and communal support that hinder effective usage.
In today's fast-paced world, stress has become a growing health concern. While more automatic stress tracking technologies have recently become available on wearable or mobile devices, there is still a limited understanding of how they are actually used in everyday life. This paper presents an empirical study of automatic stress-tracking technologies in use in China, based on semi-structured interviews with 17 users. The study highlights three challenges of stress-tracking data engagement that prevent effective technology usage: the lack of immediate awareness, the lack of pre-required knowledge, and the lack of corresponding communal support. Drawing on the stress-tracking practices uncovered in the study, we bring these issues to the fore, and unpack assumptions embedded in related works on self-tracking and how data engagement is approached. We end by calling for a reconsideration of data engagement as part of self-tracking practices with technologies rather than simply looking at the user interface.