Data Engagement Reconsidered: A Study of Automatic Stress Tracking Technology in Use

In today’s fast-paced world, stress has become a growing health concern. While more automatic stress tracking technologies have recently become available on wearable or mobile devices, there is still a limited understanding of how they are actually used in everyday life. This paper presents an empirical study of automatic stress-tracking technologies in use in China, based on semi-structured interviews with 17 users. The study highlights three challenges of stress-tracking data engagement that prevent effective technology usage: the lack of immediate awareness, the lack of pre-required knowledge, and the lack of corresponding communal support. Drawing on the stress-tracking practices uncovered in the study, we bring these issues to the fore, and unpack assumptions embedded in related works on self-tracking and how data engagement is approached. We end by calling for a reconsideration of data engagement as part of self-tracking practices with technologies rather than simply looking at the user interface.