Be Consistent, Work the Program, Be Present Every Day: Exploring Technologies for Self-Tracking in Early Recovery

Recovery from substance abuse disorders (SUDs) is a lifelong process of change. Self-tracking technologies have been proposed by the recovery community as a beneficial design space to support people adopting positive lifestyles and behaviors in their recovery. To explore the potential of this design space, we designed and deployed a technology probe consisting of a mobile app, wearable visualization, and ambient display to enable people to track and reflect on the activities they adopted in their recovery process. With this probe we conducted a four-week exploratory field study with 17 adults in early recovery to investigate 1) what activities people in recovery desire to track, 2) how people perceive self-tracking tools in relation to their recovery process, and 3) what digital resources self-tracking tools can provide to aid the recovery process. Our findings illustrate the array of activities that people track in their recovery, along with usage scenarios, preferences and design tensions that arose. We discuss implications for holistic self-tracking technologies and opportunities for future work in behavior change support for this context.