Design for Dis/Ability: A Crip Inquiry into Personal Energy Tracking

Paper Title

Design for Dis/Ability: A Crip Inquiry into Personal Energy Tracking

Publication Info

• Topic area: Exploring energy tracking practices and their design implications through a crip theory lens.
• Keywords: Energy tracking, self-tracking technologies, crip theory, disability studies, pacing strategies, wearables, chronic conditions, energy metrics, design implications, normativities.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Current self-tracking technologies embed societal norms of health and ability, often misaligning with subjective energy experiences, particularly during bodily and contextual changes. Energy as a design material remains ambiguous and underexplored outside chronic condition management.
• Significance: Understanding and designing for diverse energy tracking practices can foster inclusivity, challenge normative health ideals, and support broader user needs, including those not managing chronic conditions.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has focused on energy tracking for chronic conditions, such as energy-limiting conditions (ELCs), but lacks exploration of energy tracking practices in non-ELC contexts. Crip theory offers a critical lens to examine societal norms embedded in technology design and their impact on diverse users.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A crip inquiry into energy tracking practices using survey and interview methods to explore how individuals conceptualize and manage energy with wearable technologies.
• Novelty:
  1. Application of crip theory to study energy tracking outside chronic condition management.
  2. Identification of three energy conceptualizations: energy as a reserve, as a measure of wellness, and as cyclical.
  3. Development of a conceptual scaffolding comparing energy tracking practices in ELC and non-ELC contexts.
  4. Design recommendations addressing frictions in energy tracking and promoting inclusive, user-centered designs.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted a survey (50 participants) and semi-structured interviews (15 participants) to understand energy tracking practices and metrics.
  • Analyzed data qualitatively to identify themes: energy conceptions, management strategies, and frictions with metrics.
  • Compared findings to existing pacing strategies in ELC literature.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Sleep metrics (e.g., sleep score) and heart rate-based metrics (e.g., HRV, RHR) were highly rated for understanding energy levels.
  • Participants conceptualized energy as a reserve, a wellness measure, and a cyclical phenomenon influenced by factors like menstrual cycles.
  • Frictions arose from misalignments between metrics and subjective experiences, such as during sickness or stress, and the lack of cyclicity in metrics.
• Advantage over baselines: Highlighted the limitations of current energy-proxy metrics and proposed user-centered, inclusive design pathways informed by crip theory.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Survey: Rated usefulness of various metrics (e.g., HRV, sleep score, menstrual cycle insights).
  • Interviews: Explored personal energy management strategies and experiences with wearable trackers.
  • Participants: 50 survey respondents (median age 34.5, 60% female) and 15 interviewees (93% Nordic residents).
• Limitations and future work:
  • Gender imbalance in participants (predominantly female) may limit generalizability.
  • Future work should explore computational dimensions of energy metrics, cyclicity in design, and partnerships with open-source algorithms.

Summary

This study applies crip theory to investigate energy tracking practices beyond chronic condition management, identifying three core conceptualizations of energy: as a reserve, a measure of wellness, and as cyclical. Survey and interview findings reveal frictions between subjective energy experiences and normative metrics embedded in wearable technologies. By comparing these practices to pacing strategies in ELC contexts, the paper proposes a conceptual scaffolding and design recommendations to address these frictions. The research advocates for inclusive, user-centered energy tracking designs that accommodate bodily fluctuations and diverse user needs, contributing to broader discourses on health, ability, and technology design.