The quantified-self archive: documenting lives through self-tracking data
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-04-2019-0064 |
| Date | 23 August 2019 |
| Published date | 23 August 2019 |
| Pages | 290-316 |
| Author | Ciaran B. Trace,Yan Zhang |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
The quantified-self archive:
documenting lives through
self-tracking data
Ciaran B. Trace and Yan Zhang
School of Information, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which self-tracking data have meaning and
value in and after the life of the creator, including how such data could become part of the larger historical
record, curated in an institutional archive. In doing so, the article expands upon existing shared interests
among researchers working in the areas of self-tracking, human–computer interaction and archival science.
Design/methodology/approach –A total of 18 people who had self-tracked for six months or more were
recruited for the study. Participants completed a survey which gathered demographic data and
characteristics vis-à-vis their self-tracking behavior. In-person semi-structured interviews were then
conducted to ascertain the beliefs of the participants regarding the long-term use and value of personal
quantified-self data.
Findings –The findings reveal the value that people place on self-tracking data, their thoughts on proper
modes for accessing their archive once it moves from the private to the public space, and how to provide
fidelity within the system such that their experiences are represented while also enabling meaning making on
the part of subsequent users of the archive.
Originality/value –Today’s quantified-self data are generally embedded in systems that create a pipeline
from the individual source to that of the corporate warehouse, bent on absorbing and extracting insight from
a totality of big data. This article posits that new opportunities for knowing and for design can be revealed
when a public interest rationale is appended to rich personalized collections of small data.
Keywords Documents, Documentation, Information behaviour, Digital archive, Small data, Data studies,
Personal informatics, Quantified-self, Self-tracking
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The drive to capture and quantify aspects of the human experience has deep roots in
Western culture. From the eighteenth century onwards, access to mass produced
technologies (e.g. mechanical clocks and calendars) allowed people to measure, track,
marshal and record time. With the mastery of time, came the impetus to account for and
record how it was being used (Young, 2012). In the name of self-improvement and
self-reflection, curiosity and boredom, the need to leave a legacy and a documentary trace,
people have kept accounts, tallies, record books, logs, planners, diaries and journals to track
the lived experience of body and mind, as well as to inscribe aspects of the external world.
Notable self-trackers throughout history have included the Roman philosopher Seneca;
the sixteenth century Venetian Physiologist and Professor, Santorio Santorio; the eighteenth
century American Statesman, Benjamin Franklin; the nineteenth century British Statistician
and pioneer in Eugenics, Francis Gaston; and from the twentieth century American
Inventor, Buckminster Fuller, and Japanese Conceptual Artist, On Kawara. Today’s
self-trackers include information designers, Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, and the
Artist and Activist, Ellie Harrison. Yet, self-tracking is not just for the famous and
noteworthy. People have also embraced and incorporated self-tracking into their daily lives
on an intimate or sometimes on a grand scale. An example of the latter is the Mass
Observation Project in Britain where, between 1939 and 1967, 500 men and women recorded
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 76 No. 1, 2020
pp. 290-316
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-04-2019-0064
Received 9 April 2019
Revised 5 June 2019
Accepted 9 June 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
This work was supported by the Governor Bill Daniel Fellowship from the School of Information,
The University of Texas at Austin.
290
JD
76,1
their lives in detailed personal diaries and day surveys, capturing everything from food and
alcohol consumption, to media watching and smoking habits (Abend and Fuchs, 2016).
Today’s pervasive computing technologies (e.g. electronic sensors, smartphones, smart
phone apps and cloud storage) enable “a new scope and scale for these activities”(Shilton,
2012, p. 1905). A body of research now exists within the field of human–computer
interaction (HCI) to study people’s use of such systems for self-tracking, an activity now
referred to as quantified self, lifelogging, personal analytics and personal informatics
(Li et al., 2010; Lupton, 2014a). Like the diaries and accounts of earlier eras, these
self-tracking technologies join the pantheon of what Humphreys’(2018) calls “real-time”
forms of chronicling (p. 4). In the information science literature, the data captured through
these systems are defined as participatory personal data. Personal because the data are
created by, recorded about or mapped to an individual and participatory because the data
are accessible to the individual him or herself (Shilton, 2012). Marchionini (2008) also uses
the term “proflections of self,”indicating that personal identity is bound up with the online
digital traces created as part of lives lived online.
To date, most self-tracking research focuses on understanding motivations and barriers
for self-tracking and on developing tools and techniques to collect, represent, analyze and
visualize data to assist reflective learning and behavioral or psychological change
(Choe et al., 2014; Clawson et al., 2015). Recent HCI literature, however, has argued for
the importance of studying peoples’long-term (retrospective as well as future) use of
self-tracking data (Li et al., 2010; Elsden et al., 2016b; Elsden, Kirk and Durrant, 2016;
Elsden, Durrant, Chatting and Kirk, 2017). One strand of this research, “longitudinal QS,”
forms part of the traditional focus on self-tracking as a form of self-knowledge with the
goal of behavior modification (Van Berkel et al., 2015). In this psychologically oriented
approach, short-term reflection helps a person understand their current state, while
reflection over the long-term (months, years or even decades) reveals larger-scale patterns
and trends (Li et al., 2010, 2011).
In a second strand of self-tracking research, the emphasis shifts from studying issues of
human motivation and behavioral change to that of studying the “documentary potential”of
quantified data (Elsden, Durrant, Chatting and Kirk, 2017). Using the framework of “lived
informatics”(Rooksby et al., 2014), the moniker of the “quantified past”and the design
perspective of “documentary informatics”(Elsden, Durrant, Chatting and Kirk, 2017),
such studies have begun to explore what it means for self-tracking data to be used to
document a life rather than to change a person’s behavior. Initial research that unearthed
this use of self-tracking data found that this style of tracking (documentary tracking) is
usually only pursued in the short term (Rooksby et al., 2014). However, recent research has
challenged this finding, arguing that the study of the documentary use of self-tracking data
have been hampered by researcher bias toward studying self-tracking in terms of people’s
immediate and short-term goals (Elsden, Durrant, Chatting and Kirk, 2017).
In response, researchers are examining how people (individually and in concert with
others) encounter and experience their digital past over the long term, peoples’feelings
about sharing historical data and what data means to people, in and over time (Elsden and
Kirk, 2014; Elsden et al., 2015; Elsden, Kirk and Durrant, 2016; Elsden, Chatting, Durrant,
Garbett, Nissen, Vines and Kirk, 2017; Elsden, Durrant, Chatting and Kirk, 2017; Elsden,
O’Kane, Marshall, Durrant, Fleck, Rooksby and Lupton, 2017). Research has established
that as a document of a person’s life, some self-tracking records are of momentary and
fleeting value, whilst other records become personal touchstones, creating a point of
reflection to meaningful aspects of the past. The value of some self-tracking data has been
found to only reveal itself sporadically and over time. Such is the case with certain types of
ephemeral data that evoke nostalgia upon engagement, providing a direct link to how life
was lived in the past. Or in the case of self-tracking data that takes on new and more
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The quantified-
self archive
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