Steve Whittaker
The Quantified Self and Personal Informatics: Critique and Opportunities
July 10th, 14:00
LIMSI (Bat 507 - Univ Paris Sud), salle de conférences, How to get to there?
Abstract
The Quantified Self (QS) vision argues for collecting and analysing rich collections of personal data. According to the vision, such personal data facilitate greater self-insight promoting behaviour change. But although self quantification is important, quantified self technologies show poor rates of adoption. This talk explores reasons for this failure. I will revisit the QS vision, identifying its flaws, arguing that its overly analytic, overly rational and overly authoritative. I will present deployments of 3 new QS systems, that address these problems, proposing a new design approach to personal data systems.
Biography
Steve Whittaker is Professor of Human Computer Interaction at University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a member of the CHI Academy, and Editor of the journal Human Computer Interaction. In 2014, he received a Lifetime Research Achievement Award from SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction), he is also a Fellow of the Association for Computational Machinery. Probably best known for his work on email overload, computer mediated communication and personal information management, he combines empirical analyses that are informed by the social sciences, with novel interactive system design to address important human problems. He has worked both in industry and academia, at HPLabs, IBM, AT&T Bell Labs, and University of Sheffield. His H index is 65, and he has over 50 US and worldwide patents. He is currently working on personal informatics, and his latest book from MIT Press is The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff.