Beyond Abandonment to Next Steps: Understanding and Designing for Life after Personal Informatics Tool Use

Abstract

Recent research examines how and why people abandon self-tracking tools. We extend this work with new insights drawn from people reflecting on their experiences after they stop tracking, examining how designs continue to influence people even after abandonment. We further contrast prior work considering abandonment of health and wellness tracking tools with an exploration of why people abandon financial and location tracking tools, and we connect our findings to models of personal informatics. Surveying 193 people and interviewing 12 people, we identify six reasons why people stop tracking and five perspectives on life after tracking. We discuss these results and opportunities for design to consider life after self-tracking.