Designing for Personalization in Personal Informatics: Barriers and Pragmatic Approaches from the Perspectives of Designers, Developers, and Product Managers

As the trend towards personalization in health science and technology fields has proliferated, researchers focusing on personal informatics (PI) tools for health management have grappled with when and how to design for a personalized user experience. While previous literature has addressed users’ perspectives on personalization, an important and underexplored research area is how personalization is approached within organizational contexts. This paper reports findings from qualitative interviews with designers, developers, and product managers at a multinational company that designs, builds, and commercializes PI tools for health management. The results point to four types of barriers participants consistently encountered, often leading personalization efforts to be scaled back, and three pragmatic approaches to personalization often adopted in the face of these barriers. The paper concludes with design implications for incorporating personalization while remaining aligned with the nuances, realities, and potential strain on systems and resources inherent to the design process in company settings.