The curse of quantified-self: An endless quest for answers

Abstract

Quantified Selfers are individuals that take a proactive stance to collect and act upon their personal data. However, these endeavours towards a better insight into one's life often do not last long. An important challenge for QS is sustaining data collection over a long period of time (i.e., months, years, decades). In this paper we discuss the drivers, needs and concerns of longitudinal QS-data collection. We argue that to support longitudinal QS various obstacles have to be overcome, including i) integration and sharing of data between a variety of (new) devices, ii) incorporating human input for psychological data collection and iii) providing answers to the questions people really have.