Reflecting Upon The Unintended Consequences of Personal Informatics Systems: A Systematic Review of Empirical Studies
Yuhan Luo, Xinning Gui, Xianghua Ding, Xi Zheng, Rie Helene Hernandez, Zhuoyang Li, Qiurong Song
Abstract
The HCI community has been actively developing and studying the use of Personal Informatics (PI) systems. While celebrating the headways, researchers have uncovered many unintended consequences of using PI systems, such as data-induced stress and obsessive tracking, but there has been a lack of systematic analysis of these consequences and their underlying causes. In this work, we reviewed 172 PI research articles, highlighting that tracking and interacting with personal data can adversely affect individuals' cognitive load, emotional well-being, social acts, and behaviors, while bringing practical challenges. By synthesizing the pathways through which these consequences occur, we recognized issues in the data-centric design ideology, variations across tracking needs and literacy, the evolving social dynamics, and individuals' intention-behavior gap. Reflecting on the findings, we discuss how to best leverage personal data in our lives and propose a practice-oriented research agenda to mitigate these unintended consequences.