# Block 1 Assignment
Written by Group 4:
Amia, Lise, Mattias and Thomas

**1. Research Question**

How can the creation of self tracking data, through interaction, create a valuable reflection? And what difference does the data not being visible or processed within a context make for the user?

**2. Design choices**

The device we created was given the name Dayflection, a portmanteau of the words day and reflection. This given name points to a device that gives the user a moment and a possibility to reflect upon the day that has just been lived.

We live in a world where daily life often is pure routines and people tend to live in hamster wheels without being able to stop and reflect upon the content of their day. This hereby constitutes the reason why we chose to develop the idea around a device, which can make the user reflect on a daily basis if their day has been “good” or “bad”. This encourages the user to make a decision on whether they have had a good or a bad day and nudges them to reflect upon what constitutes “good” and “bad”. This makes a simple interaction between the user and the device, where two buttons can be pressed; one to represent a good day with a belonging green light and a similar button with a belonging red light to signify a bad day:

The idea of the design is that no data from pressing the two buttons will be stored visible to the user, which then makes an output without any context and thus to avoid external factors that may affect the reflection of the day. The reflection is then established through a simple interaction between the device and the user. This paints a picture of living in a digitalized world where the urge to track one's every step is displayed in a form, also becoming a critique of all the data we give freely, and instead points to how the fact that data is not being stored visibly, might make the user act more freely without context and comparison. Here, the reflection that occurs is significant in this encounter and on the contrary the data being made from the interaction is deemed less important.

**3. Prototype**

The prototype has two buttons and two LEDs, one green and one red. Pressing the left button will make the red LED light up, while pressing the right will light up the green LED:

When the finger is lifted from a button the corresponding red/green light will slowly fade out:

The program will write to the serial monitor which button has been pressed how many times, saving the data as "goodDays" and "badDays".

The making process was a contuinuation of the design process. Creating with arduino made it possible to quickly put together the quite simple logic of the design by reusing a sketch from an arduino workshop. Reflecting on the ideas of the design, ie. creating no output of the ongoing data capture of multiple clicks, but only giving feedback of the present, made us think about the ephemerality of the interaction and the materiality of data. Wanting to create a more ambigous feedback than the binary on/off in an artefact already characterized by binary choice, we prolonged the presence of the choice with the fadeout of the light with this piece of code:

} else if (gledVal != 0){ //if the LED is not off (value =0)
gledVal = gledVal - 1; // fadeout the green LED
} else if (rledVal != 0){ //if the LED is not off (value =0)
rledVal = rledVal - 1; // fadeout the red LED

This might serve as an analogy of how our memory works; fading out to something intangible. Likewise the capture of the choice of button press into data is for the user intangible and and not seen. On the other hand the lingering presence of the feedback of the interaction might draw the user to suspect the quantification of the button press.

While we had chosen to not show the data capture to the user, we wanted to explore how easy it was to capture the data in the program. Working practically with both the components and the programming where the use of variables and serial monitor/console logging is so pervasive, made us realize that data capturing is such a central aspect of the technology. The ease we had with implementing a hidden data capture is due to the inherent quantification of computation.

**4. Datafication and the influence of external context**

When we ask the user of our device “Dayflection” to answer the question of whether their day was good or bad, we ask them indirectly to reflect about their day. We have given the user what seems to be a simple choice of “Good Day” or “Bad Day”. Not to make it easy on the user, but to influence them into thinking about what makes a day good or bad.
Not providing an overview of the data in the form of counted days in good or bad/ red or green, hopefully would lead the user's reflection to consist solely of the current day's events. And whether or not they put it into their own context in regards to previous days, talks into the way the user makes the decision about their day. The device is a form of self tracking through interaction, this sheds a light on the fact that many self tracks everyday by using devices that makes this tracking automised. Datafication is as described in the following quote:

> “the transformation of human life into data through processes of quantification, and the generation of different kinds of value from data”(Mejias, Couldry, 2019).
>
Being aware of the datafication of one's life and how this is creating potential value, might make one reconsider the use of automated self tracking. The datafication of days being good or bad in itself do not create value for others that the user using it to reflect and look at life more day to day, when not set into a specific context.
If this data was made to be shared socially, the possibility that this would create a less honest reflection about the day is a factor to consider. When sharing socially the user might take others' opinion into more reconsideration than their own. As argued by Mejias and Couldry in Datafication:
> “This line of critique argues that we are, through datafication, becoming dependent on (external, privatised) data measurements to tell us who we are, what we are feeling, and what we should be doing, which challenges our basic conception of human agency and knowledge.” (Mejias, Couldry, 2019)
>
This leaves us wondering if making the use of data more transparent would remove the option of datafication that is non-influenced by social norms or one's self-image.

**5. Value of data without context**

In Deborah Luptons research article *“How data come to matter? Living and becoming with personal data” (2018)*, she argues that data is inherently dependent on broader contextualization in order to create value for the actors involved. However, we argue that the process of personal reflection prior and during the creation of data can be another way of making self-tracking meaningful, but here only in the moment of user-interaction. This concept stands in opposition to the normative model of self tracking personal data, which one could argue is less about tracking oneself and more about letting yourself be tracked, what we mean by this is that most commercial self tracking apps and products affords reflection after the fact, once the data has been rendered comparable, readable and thus "useful" to the user.
While our design concept ignores the process of storing, contextualization and reusing of data, Dayflection still reduces the reflection of the user's day to simply being good or bad, then the artefact and interaction becomes all about what the design asks of the user to process, not vice versa.

**6. Bibliography**

Mejias, Ulises A., and Nick Couldry. "Datafication." Internet Policy Review 8.4 (2019).

Lupton, Deborah. "How Do Data Come to Matter? Living and Becoming with Personal Data". Big Data & Society 5, no. 2 (2018)