Tracking to Success? A Critical Reflection on Workplace Quantified-Self Technologies from a Humanistic Perspective
Cornelia Gerdenitsch, Till Bieg, Myriam Gaitsch, Philip Schörpf, Manfred Tscheligi, Simone Kriglstein
Abstract
Self-tracking has become omnipresent in our daily lives. By providing insights into how work practices relate to performance or (physical and mental) health, quantified-self technologies (QST) have also made their way into the world of work. Contemporary QST process personal data from multiple sources to help people to gain a better knowledge about themselves at work. According to humanistic psychology, humans have an initial drive to grow and self-actualize, that is, to become a better version of themselves. A key step towards self-actualization is accepting oneself without meeting certain conditions and thus questioning so called “conditions of worth” (e.g., I am a valued person if I am good at my job). In this article, we discuss possible effects of QST at the workplace. We raise the question, how QST could be either used as a tool to locate personal growth outside the capitalist labor process or, on the contrary, to create conditions of worth and thus promote the “entrepreneurial self” – a self which is driven to constantly improve and therefore vulnerable for self-exploitation. In QST development, design choices determine whether they are more designed toward personal growth outside the capitalist labor process or toward the idea of an entrepreneurial self. Thus, we conclude this article by formulating implications for the design of QST, which we cluster along the actors and purpose of the technology (Who? and Why?), the specifics of the work context (Where?), the temporal aspects of the usage (When?), and the design elements used (How?).