This thesis focuses on self-tracking, which mean monitoring and recording information about oneself using digital technologies and its use by runners in the Czech Republic. The main aim of this thesis is to describe the Czech running community through a detailed sociological analysis, and to answer a question: Why runners use self-tracking and how they benefit from it? The theoretical part firstly deals with the topic of self-tracking itself, then examines the uses and gratifications theory and the theory of online communities. The analytical part is devoted to description, analysis and interpretation of the results of the author's own survey, in which 844 runners of whom 754 practice self-tracking participated. Several hypotheses concerning sociodemographic structure, running characteristics, motivation, gratifications and safety were formulated. Five key motives (self-control, orientation to result, self-improvement, habit and social interaction) that lead runners to use self-tracking devices were identified through exploratory factor analysis. The motives vary based on gender and running characteristics (experience with running, runner's level, frequency of running, trainer) that also represent the main influencing factor for self-tracking in general. Self-tracking is closely related to sharing...

Personal informatics systems help people collect and reflect on behavioral information to better understand their own behavior. Because most systems only show one type of behavioral information, finding factors that affect one’s behavior is difficult. Supporting exploration of multiple types of contextual and behavioral information in a single interface may help. To explore this, I developed prototypes of IMPACT, which supports reflection on physical activity and multiple types of contextual information. I conducted field studies of the prototypes, which showed that such a system could increase people’s awareness of opportunities for physical activity. However, several limitations affected the usage and value of these prototypes. To improve support for such systems, I conducted a series of interviews and field studies. First, I interviewed people about their experiences using personal informatics systems resulting in the Stage-Based Model of Personal Informatics Systems, which describes the different stages that systems need to support, and a list of problems that people experience in each of the stages. Second, I identified the kinds of questions people ask about their personal data and found that the importance of these questions differed between two phases: Discovery and Maintenance. Third, I evaluated different visualization features to improve support for reflection on multiple kinds of data. Finally, based on this evaluation, I developed a system called Innertube to help people reflect on multiple kinds of data in a single interface using a visualization integration approach that makes it easier to build such tools compared to the more common data integration approach.

This thesis explores a concept by Sonvox AB called VoiceUp. The concept is that of a mobile application that communicates with a wearable voice measuring device and visualizes voice information in a way that helps singers. Sonvox current main product is VoxLog—a system for long-term voice monitoring, mostly used for research purposes. Sonvox believes that their voice analysis technology could be relevant to a larger audience. The main goal for the thesis is to explore if a wearable voice measuring device could be relevant to singers, and in what ways. To do this, a needs analysis was conducted where song teachers and singers were interviewed. In order to draw statistical conclusions about the occurrence of needs, a survey was conducted where people with an interest for singing were the targeted respondents. Based on the result from the needs analysis, the VoiceUp concept was refined, resulting in an idea of a product that measures and visualizes how much the user sings and speaks with the aim to increase singers motivation to practice singing more regularly. Based on theory related to self-tracking, a design proving the concept was created, resulting in a mockup and a simple prototype. The mockup and the prototype can together be seen as one example of how self-tracking technology could be relevant to singers.

Global warming has increased significantly over the past decades and at its center, there are human factors which have the greatest impacts on productions of carbon dioxide which is considered as a primary greenhouse gas in development of global warming. Greenhouse gas emissions and, in particular, carbon dioxide emissions are growing significantly to the extent that if no initiatives are taken, it can have dramatic consequences for our future generations and in general for human’s life on Earth, therefore we need means by which we can control and maintain the levels of greenhouse gas emissions and in particular carbon dioxide emissions. One of the efficient solutions that can significantly decrease the levels of carbon dioxide emissions is the construction and development of smart cities. In this context (smart city), individuals can play an important role in reducing the CO2 emissions. By considering the new opportunities that can result from development of Smart Cities and the essential role of information and communication technology (ICT) in such cities, this thesis work tries to introduce the idea of a self-tracking Carbon Footprint mobile application which enables users to keep track of their individual’s carbon dioxide emissions occurred as a result of their daily activities such as eating, transportation, shopping, energy consumption, and etc. in real time. Being able to measure the generated carbon footprint with respect to each of the user’s activities, users will be able to monitor and control it. This monitoring and controlling of one’s carbon footprint can have significant influences in reducing those human factors which result in production of more carbon dioxide gases and consequently more global warming effects.

This Research-through-Design conducted as thesis project within Malmö University Interaction Design Master’s programme is an attempt to bridge the gap between the quantified self and the subjective & collective experiences of the self-tracking for less normative ways of meaning-making of data. In order to accomplish this, it offers a feminist critique of self-tracking and an exploration of new features for self-tracking apps using provotypes to inform the HCI community.