This research aims to investigate how using time management apps with systematic breaks affects the focus and productivity of first-year students during self-studying. It specifically explores their experiences of taking breaks through a self-tracking timer app using the Pomodoro technique. The study also examines how the students’ phone habits impact their studies. A mixed-methods approach was employed, beginning with a questionnaire to understand the participants’ phone habits and time management app experience. They then used a Pomodoro app for a week, with the option to keep a diary. Finally, semi-structured interviews explored their experiences, and the qualitative data was analyzed inductively through a thematic analysis. Participants found mobile phone use distracting while studying and had difficulty reducing it. The Pomodoro app helped some focus and reduced phone use, but others preferred existing methods or started skipping breaks. Breaks spent online were common but offline breaks were generally valued higher. Participants emphasized achieving productivity as a path to well-being, staying on track, reducing stress, and leading to satisfaction. Regarding design implications and time management preferences, participants look for simple self-tracking methods like calendars, drawing an urge to more long-term planning tools rather than timers.

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.

While both public opinion and scholars around the world are currently pointing out the danger of increasingly popular life-logging devices, this book articulates this debate by distinguishing between automatic and manual life-logging approaches. Since new definitions of life-logging have excluded the latter approach and have been mainly focused on effortless life-logging technologies such as Google Glass and Quantified Self applications in general, the second part of this thesis theoretically frames life-stowing.Through extensive etymological research, I have defined life-stowing as a manual and effortful practice conducted by life-stowers, individuals who devote their life to sampling reality in predefined frameworks. As part of this book, an historical overview introduces life-stowers and distinguishes between Apollonian and Dionysian varieties of these practitioners. Lastly, in order to understand the future reception of life-stowing, particularly in relation to digital media, I have disclosed my ongoing life-stowing project to a small audience. / Den samtida samhälls- och forskningsdebatt, där de allt mer populära teknologierna för life-logging ofta framställs som farliga, vidgas och utvecklas i denna bok genom ett särskiljande av automatiska och manuella tekniker för life-loggning. Eftersom nya definitioner av life-loggning i stor utsträckning har exkluderat manuella tekniker och fokuserat på egenmätning som inte kräver så mycket av användaren, såsom GoogleGlass, innehåller avhandlingen också ett teoretisk utforskande av begreppet lifestowing. Genom omfattande etymologisk forskning definieras life-stowing i avhandlingen som en manuell och ansträngande praktik utförd av life-stowers, personer som vigt sina liv åt att samla och spara bitar av verkligenheten enligt fördefinierade ramar. I den historiska översikten introduceras två typer av life-stowers, den Apollonianska och den Dionysiska. Slutligen, för att förstå det framtida mottagandet av life-stowing i relation till digitala medier, presenteras författarens egna life stowingprojekt för en mindre publik.

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.

This thesis questions the idea that; quantified self technology can make us understand our bodies better and facilitate a healthy relationship with the body. Instead, it proposes that a healthy relationship to the body is developed through technology that facilitates a somatic practice, involving the bodily experience in the interpretations of the data. This is achieved by bringing in values inspired by the practice of mindfulness as an alternative to the existing design values promoted in technological solutions dealing with the body. I have designed a first prototype, Inner Mirror, which explores adolescents’ body relationship through screen-based visuals. Inner Mirror detects adolescents’ arousals to visualize their emotional changes in abstract representations that they are invited to connect to specific emotional experiences. The process of designing Inner Mirror will be described thoroughly in the paper. The process was a continuous negotiation between the ideas and values that I brought into the project and the adolescents’ worldview. This is described through a first-person perspective and a participatory design approach. Two school classes of 43 adolescents (between 13 to 14 years old) have participated in the project through three workshops. In the end, I test the prototype in two different settings: on myself, adopting the first-person perspective and together with the adolescents. Finally, three concepts that emerged in the design work are evaluated to suggest a direction for future work.

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.

Industrie 4.0 und aktuelle Entwicklungen in dem Bereich der produzierenden Unternehmen erfordern hohe Anpassungsleistungen von Menschen und von Maschinen gleichermaßen. In Smart Factories werden Produktionsmitarbeiter zu Wissensarbeitern. Dazu bedarf es neben neuen, intelligenten, technischen Lösungen auch neuer Ansätze für Arbeitsorganisation, Trainings- und Qualifizierungskonzepte, die mit adaptierbaren technischen Systemen flexibel zusammenarbeiten. Das durch die EU geförderte Projekt Factory2Fit entwickelt Lösungen für die Mensch-Technik-Interaktion in automatisierten Produktionssystemen, welche eine hohe Anpassungsfähigkeit an die Fähigkeiten, Kompetenzen und Präferenzen der individuellen Mitarbeiter bieten und damit gleichzeitig den Herausforderungen einer höchst kundenindividuellen Produktion gewachsen sind. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die grundlegenden Ziele und Ideen des Projektes vorgestellt sowie die Ansätze des Quantified-self im Arbeitskontext, die adaptive Automatisierung inklusive der verschiedenen Level der Automation sowie die spezifische Anwendung des partizipatorischen Designs näher beleuchtet. In den nächsten Arbeitsschritten innerhalb des Projektes gilt es nun, diese Konzepte um- und einzusetzen sowie zu validieren. Die interdisziplinäre Arbeitsweise sowie der enge Kontakt zwischen Wissenschafts-, Entwicklungs- und Anwendungspartnern sollten dazu beitragen, den Herausforderungen bei der Realisierung erfolgreich zu begegnen und zukunftsträchtige Smart Factory-Lösungen zu implementieren. Das Projekt Factory2Fit wird im Rahmen von Horizon 2020, dem EU Rahmenprogramm für Forschung und Innovation (H2020/2014-2020), mit dem Förderkennzeichen 723277 gefördert.

Användningen av självkvantifieringsapplikationer är utbredd, men dess utförande långt från fulländat. Den användning som förekommer är nästintill uteslutande koncentrerad till självförbättring. I denna undersökning appliceras denna trend av självförbättring på en global hållbarhetskontext med syfte att minska klimatpåverkan kopplat till livsmedelskonsumtion. Här avses undersöka hur återkoppling i en självkvantifieringsapplikation kan utformas för att förändra en specifik vana, köttkonsumtion. Undersökningen som utfördes bestod i en kvantifieringsstudie där deltagare på egen hand kartlade sin livsmedelskonsumtion utifrån huruvida den var vegetarisk eller ej. Deltagarna i studien fick ta del av olika typer av återkoppling på sin konsumtion. För hälften av deltagarna sattes den personliga konsumtionen i förhållande till den genomsnittliga konsumtionen. Den andra hälften tog istället del av vetenskapligt grundade påståenden om hur konsumtionen måste se ut för en hållbar framtidsutveckling. Ingen av grupperna visade på någon definitiv beteendeförändring av köttkonsumtionen. Deltagarna efterfrågade olika återkoppling beroende på deras mål och viljor samt förkunskaper. Självkvantifering i detta syfte togs väl emot och deltagarna var positiva till användningen, men önskade ytterligare återkoppling. / The use of Quantified Self (QS) applications is widely spread, however, its design and potential is far from fulfilled. Today, its main focus is on self-improvement. This essay aims to investigate how self-improvement can be put in a global sustainable context and how the feedback in a QS-application can be designed to change one specific habit, meat consumption. The survey consisted of a logging phase where participants logged their food consumption in terms of whether each meal was vegetarian or not. The participants in the study were divided into two groups that got two different types of feedback on their consumption. The first group’s feedback consisted of a relation between each participants individual meat consumption related to the mean score of the rest of the group, while the other group got information about scientifically established facts about future sustainable meat consumption. Neither of the groups showed any definite behaviour change in their meat consumption. Results show that the participants had needs for individually designed feedback depending on their motivation, ability and attitudes to the issue. The concept of self quantization got positive feedback in the post-study survey participants were asked to answer, although many of participants requested more interactivity and differently designed feedback content.

Det har idag blivit alltmer populärt att spåra sin aktivitet i syfte att förbättra och förenkla sin vardag och sitt liv. Genom att använda olika verktyg kan människor idag ge produkter och tjänster tillgång till deras data för att spåra deras aktivitet. Ett sådant verktyg är aktivitetsarmbandet och smartklockan. Med dessa kan användare bland annat mäta puls, antal steg och få sms- och samtalsnotifikationer. Armbanden och klockorna samlar därmed in data kring användarnas hälsa och aktivitet och på så sätt kan de visa statistik för användarna för att ge dem information om hur mycket - eller hur lite - de till exempel rör sig under en dag. Denna studie har fokuserat på hur användare upplever användningen av dessa armband och klockor och hur dessa verktyg påverkar deras motivation. Tillvägagångssättet för studien har varit en dagboksstudie kombinerat med kompletterande intervjuer. Genom denna metod har olika teman kunnat identifieras utifrån svaren som dagböckerna och intervjuerna har gett. Dessa teman är: aktivitetsspårning, funktionalitet, personlig utveckling, feedback och uppkoppling. Resultatet har visat att deltagarna i studien upplever i stort sett en motivation av att använda armbanden och klockorna, på så sätt att de uppmuntras att ta fler steg när de ser svart på vitt hur många steg de hittills har tagit. Resultatet pekar även på ett större engagemang hos deltagarna att hålla en koll på deras motion och hälsa, vilket armbanden och klockorna möjliggör. / It has become popular today to track one’s activity in order to improve and simplify one’s everyday life and well being. By using different tools you can today give products and services access to your data for them to track your activity, be it your movement or your phone activity logs. By giving them access to such you can in turn get information for example about how much - or how little - you exercise during a day. This study has focused on how users experience wearables and smart watches and how these tools influence their motivation. Through a diary study and interviews we have identified five themes: activity tracking, functionality, personal development, feedback and connection. The result of this study has shown that most of the participants of the study experience motivation to use the wearables and watches, partly because they can clearly see how many steps they have taken and how many steps they have left to reach their goal. The result also shows a higher commitment among the participants to track their activity and their health, which the wearables and smart watches enable them to do.