Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of wearable health and fitness trackers in everyday life, and users’ motivations and their understanding and use of the data derived from devices, and understand the results using the lens of information behaviours.

The study used a qualitative, constructionist approach, based on 21 interviews with users of a range of wearable activity trackers used for health and fitness.

Findings show that the lifelogging devices have become companion tools that enable users to take information from their bodily indicators and make some decisions about their health and fitness, and also track the results when they act on it, thus giving them a sense of gratification and a sense of control over their own health.

The findings have implications on how health professionals can talk to their lifelogging patients about how to deal with and understand the information provided by their activity-tracking devices. Some participants in the study already discuss these data regularly with their health professionals.

As the self-tracking practices attract wide range research interests from human–computer interaction, information systems, digital sociology, health informatics and marketing among others. This study provides important everyday information-seeking perspective that contributes to the understanding of the practices of how people make sense of the data, how the data improves their wellbeing, i.e. physical health improvement or fitness, and implications to users health behaviour. Additionally the study adds to the lifelogging literature through a constructionist, qualitative approach rather than a technological deterministic approach.

Scholars in information science have recently become interested in “information experience,” but it remains largely unclear why this research is important and how it fits within the broader disciplinary structure of information science. The purpose of this paper is to clarify this issue.

The discussion unfolds in the form of a philosophical dialogue between the Epistemologist, who represents the traditional and majority epistemological viewpoint of information science, and the Aestheticist, representing the emerging paradigm of experiential information inquiry.

A framework emerges that recognizes dual conceptualizations of truth (veritas and aletheia) and consequently information and knowledge (gnostic and pathic). The epistemic aim of understanding is revealed as the common ground between epistemology and aesthetics.

The value of studying human experiences of information is grounded in work spanning philosophy, psychology and a number of social science methodologies, and it is contextualized within information science generally. Moreover, the dialogic format of this paper presents an opportunity for disciplinary self-reflection and offers a touch of heart to the field.