How Does My Time Use Align With My Values? Personal Informatics for Connecting Abstract Values to Everyday Life

Can self-tracking technology be designed to help us learn how our everyday activities align with our values? Existing personal informatics systems can help track time use, but rarely explicitly connect time use with personal abstract values. We designed, built, and deployed eValuATE, a personal informatics system that helps individuals reconstruct their everyday activities, annotate those activities with their values, and visualize relationships between their activities and values. Fifteen participants used the system in a think-aloud study, a 2-4 week deployment, and a closing interview. The system helped participants refine their own values, understand how those values were supported through their daily activities, view their time use differently, and in many cases change their behavior to better align with their values. We discuss design considerations for self-tracking abstract values, motivate a shift towards short term life studies over perpetual self-tracking, and present a multi-level reflection model for personal informatics system design.