CMU Human-Computer Interaction Institute Seminar

Speaker: Daniel Epstein, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine

Title: Towards More Meaningful Personal Tracking

Description: Personal tracking through digital technologies like pedometers, mood monitoring apps, and food journaling apps has great potential to help people begin to change their behaviors, understand their habits, connect with others and advocate for their healthcare. But in practice, they have largely failed to deliver on their promise of helping people derive value from their health and wellbeing data, with majorities abandoning tracking within weeks or even days. A core challenge is that people often view the act of tracking as a meaningless experience, finding that tracking technology prioritizes behavior change over opportunity to create other meaningful experiences through personal satisfaction, connection, and communication. In this talk, I discuss how my research group has approached understanding how to make personal tracking more meaningful, and design strategies that we think provide for more meaningful tracking experiences. I will touch on opportunities for meaningful tracking we are examining in personal, social, and clinical settings.

Attend in-person (CMU Newell Simon Hall, Room 1305) or view virtual livestream/recording

See seminar link for more details.