Know Thyself: A Theory of the Self for Personal Informatics

Although Personal Informatics stresses the importance of “self”-awareness and “self”-knowledge in collecting personal data, a description of the “self,” to which all these knowledge endeavors are addressed, is missing in the current debate. In this article we first review how the different theoretical assumptions that currently inform the design of Personal Informatics tools fail to convey a convincing image of the self, which ought to be quantified by these technologies. We then move on to the outline of a theory of the self that may ground the current discourse in Personal Informatics. Building on this theoretical framework, we propose a set of design guidelines as its implications, which may drive the design of future self-tracking technologies. Finally, we outline a research agenda, organized around such guidelines, in the form of research questions to be addressed in the future.