Unpacking the Lived Experience of Collaborative Pregnancy Tracking

Title of the Paper

Unpacking the Lived Experience of Collaborative Pregnancy Tracking

Paper Information

• Research Domain: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Pregnancy Tracking, Personal Informatics
• Keywords: Pregnancy tracking, personal informatics, self-tracking, social tracking, women's health

Research Background and Issues

• Research Background:

  • Pregnancy often entails physical, emotional, and financial challenges, impacting not only the pregnant individual but also their partners, family, and friends.
  • Existing pregnancy tracking technologies primarily focus on the pregnant individual, neglecting the needs of other stakeholders (e.g., partners, family, and friends).
  • Current technologies largely treat pregnancy as a solitary experience, whereas pregnancy often requires collaborative efforts to achieve healthy outcomes.

• Research Issues and Importance:

  • Pregnancy tracking is not only about monitoring the health of the pregnant individual and fetus but also involves social support and health management.
  • Existing research and technologies emphasize independent tracking by pregnant individuals, with limited focus on how non-pregnant stakeholders collaborate in tracking pregnancy-related data.
  • Collaborative pregnancy tracking faces challenges such as privacy concerns, differences in stakeholder interests, and social-cultural norms.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • This study aims to explore the lived experiences of pregnant individuals and non-pregnant stakeholders in collaboratively managing pregnancy information to better design technologies that support collaborative tracking.
  • Existing literature has explored personalized informatics systems, the design of women's health technologies, and the impact of socio-cultural factors on pregnancy experiences, but lacks an in-depth understanding of multi-stakeholder collaboration models.

Solution

• Research Methods:

  • The authors conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 13 pregnant individuals and 11 non-pregnant stakeholders (including partners, friends, and family).
  • The study examined the reasons, methods, and challenges of pregnancy tracking.

• Research Focus:

  • Research questions include:
    1. Why do pregnant individuals and non-pregnant stakeholders collaborate in pregnancy tracking?
    2. How do they collaborate in recording and managing pregnancy information?
    3. What challenges and conflicts do they face?

• Research Innovation:

  • Expands the focus from individual self-tracking to "collaborative tracking."
  • Specifically analyzes challenges related to privacy, responsibility allocation, and socio-emotional management in collaborative pregnancy data tracking.

Research Findings

• Specific Findings:

  • Collaboration Goals:

    1. Strengthening social connections and enhancing social support.
    2. Jointly managing pregnancy data, including the pregnant individual's health, psychological state, lifestyle habits, and fetal development.
    3. Promoting a healthy pregnancy state through collaboration.

  • Collaboration Methods:

    1. Division of Tracking: Participants allocate tracking tasks based on interests and abilities, such as separately managing fetal development data and the pregnant individual's health data.
    2. Cooperative Tracking: Collaboratively managing difficult-to-collect or complex data using shared tools (e.g., Google Docs) for coordinated tracking.

  • Challenges Faced:

    1. Privacy Concerns: Pregnant individuals are sensitive about which data can be shared and with whom.
    2. Managing Stakeholder Opinions: Pregnant individuals need to balance others' suggestions with their own interpretations of the data.
    3. Trust Issues: Pregnant individuals sometimes doubt the tracking abilities and reliability of others' data.
    4. Interest Differences: Non-pregnant stakeholders show varying levels of interest in participating in tracking.
    5. Occasional Need for Detachment: Pregnant individuals and stakeholders may desire breaks from tracking.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions:

  • The proposed collaborative methods differ from traditional personalized tracking (individual management of data) and one-way data sharing (non-pregnant stakeholders passively receiving data). Instead, they emphasize equal, dynamically managed multi-stakeholder systems.

• Experimental Results and Limitations:

  • Experimental Results: Collaboration effectively reduces the burden on pregnant individuals while strengthening emotional connections between them and other stakeholders.
  • Limitations:
    1. Participants were predominantly from high-education and middle-to-high-income backgrounds, lacking diversity in socioeconomic samples.
    2. The study was limited to the U.S. cultural context, with insufficient exploration of collaborative models in other cultural settings.
    3. Did not include cross-analysis of multiple stakeholders involved in the same pregnancy-related events.

• Future Research Directions:

  • Explore the impact of socio-cultural factors on collaborative tracking, especially in patriarchal or sensitive cultural environments.
  • Balance pregnant individuals' bodily autonomy with non-pregnant stakeholders' participation rights in system design.
  • Conduct more diverse sample studies, including various family dynamics (e.g., single-parent families, younger pregnant individuals).

Summary and Design Suggestions

• Pregnancy tracking technologies that support multi-stakeholder collaboration should protect the privacy and autonomy of pregnant individuals while encouraging stakeholder participation.
• Provide flexible tracking configuration options, such as allowing pregnant individuals to decide the types of data to share and with whom.
• Facilitate stakeholder negotiation in responsibility allocation, using intuitive interface designs to highlight the advantages of collaboration and reduce tracking burdens.
• Functionally align with existing socio-cultural norms while challenging inequalities, such as reflecting non-pregnant stakeholders' data contributions or emphasizing the importance of collaboration through the interface design.