COUNTING ON: Humanizing self-tracked data in a connected world

This thesis explores the evolving role of the Quantified Self and self-tracking culture within personalized healthcare. Health and fitness wearables are proliferating globally. However, wearable device abandonment rates are also surging. Wearables can sometimes be authoritative or punitive when presenting wearers with their biological data. In the past, some devices have even triggered adverse health-related conditions. This thesis proposes an approach to visualizing biological data from wearables, in ways that are coherent, contextual, and humane. It critiques normative data visualizations in commercial wearables and speculates alternate futures for self-tracking to empower individuals to manage their health and well-being autonomously. Through an iterative development process to prototype creation, the author gathers biological data using a consumer wearable device and uses it to propose an information architecture that categorizes the data coherently. The architecture is applied in hand-drawn, domestic, embedded visualization prototypes that present the author’s biological data. Lastly, user interviews are conducted to acquire responses to the prototypes and plan possibilities for future iterations. The purpose of this research is to advocate empathy and compassion in the emerging culture of living with data while considering the intricacies of everyday life, the imperfections of being human, and the need for autonomy in personal data management