A post discussing the nuances behind designing experiments that track mood, including insights into the debate as to whether negative and positive emotions should be measured as polar opposite or considered states that can be experienced at the same time.
Exactly ten years ago, at an early Quantified Self meetup, Joe Betts-La Croix expressed “three wishes” for tools to make data collection for self-tracking easier. Joe asked for: A simple database that would accept data inputs from anybody using fairly simple and adaptable formats (for instance .xml) and just hold it there, eventually allowing other…
The Quantified Self Conference was held on September 22nd and 23rd in Portland, Oregon. Over the two days of the conference we had over eighty talks, presentations, and breakout discussions about self-tracking, everyday science, and “self-knowledge through numbers.” Over the next few weeks we will be posting videos, slides and notes, but for now let us…
Surprisingly little of the attention and funding turned to personalized, predictive, preventative medicine has focused on the female reproductive system: pregnancy onset cannot be quickly identified, menopause onset and trajectory remain entirely mysterious, and adverse reactions to tools like hormonal birth control are difficult to anticipate. Importantly, there are no automated, cheap, high-accuracy methods…
Maggie Delano is a professor of engineering and very experienced self-tracker whose pioneering work on DIY measurements systems includes a fluid status monitor for patients with congestive heart failure and a wearable device that continuously measures single lead electrocardiogram (ECG) and three axis acceleration data for up to one week. She wrote the first Quantified…
Esther Dyson is a board member of 23andme, former chair of ICANN and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and an investor in companies like Omada Health, PatientsLikeMe, and Medspace. But, like the rest of us, she spends a good portion of her life unconscious. While sleeping, she collects data with three different devices: Oura, Whoop, and…
If you were to look at Aaron Parecki’s map of his hometown, there is only a slight chance you’d recognize it as Portland, Oregon. Some roads are brightly colored thick lines that stand out against a black background and others are thin, barely visible filaments that are easy to miss. There are no marked roads…
In May we released the Personal Data Notebooks with Open Humans. These interactive documents – which bring together text, images and code – are designed to easily access an individual’s own personal data. At the launch of the Personal Data Notebooks we invited the Open Humans and Quantified Self community to contribute their own personal…
Please join us at QS18 for over 60 first person talks, tool demos, and expert-lead workshops about self-tracking, N-of-1, and everyday science. Our focus this year is on “QS&Learning.” Along with a special plenary talk and discussion by pioneering teacher, scholar and self-experimenter Alan Neuringer, we are bringing together Quantified Self experts from all over…
Following closely behind Whitney’s pregnancy project, it is fitting to share Erica Forzani’s pregnancy tracking project that can inspire any human who has carried a human in her belly. In addition to just being pregnant and dealing with the work involved with growing a human, Erica tracked her blood glucose levels, physical dimensions, weight, resting metabolic…
After conceiving a beautiful baby girl, Whitney E. Boesel participated in the Bloodtester’s Project – a group of self-trackers conducting their own experiments to better understand their cholesterol together. After having her baby, Whitney learned that her cholesterol was unusually high and she became curious to understand what the cause was. She presented her findings, Cholesterol Variability: Hours, Days,…
Despite the fact that our human existence relies on pregnant women and birth, there is surprisingly very little understood when a woman doesn’t fall within the “averages” and the “knowns.” We are all so different, and any woman knows that her body at some point will most likely not fall within the “average” range and…
Vivienne Ming is an accomplished neuroscientist and an entrepreneur, however this project is not about her kick-ass professional work, instead, it’s deeply personal about how she manages her son’s diabetes. Vivienne presented her project, Tracking My Son’s Diabetes at the 2013 QS Global Conference. When Vivienne’s not conducting research or working on new ideas she’s…
Women are increasingly (albeit slowly) taking more control in work, politics, life and society. However, unfortunately, being a woman means one has to consistently work extra hard to understand and know her own body to stay in control, because, unfortunately according to the laws of many governments and society-at-large, her body isn’t truly hers. At…
Another thoughtful project that studies the human’s physiological response to music is one by Elliott Hedman who studied himself and others’ physiological measurements during a classical concert. In addition to tracking himself and others with EDA sensors, Elliott also videotaped the sensors to track where in the music, people’s sensors were triggered and shifted. He learned…
Justin Lawler, the organizer of Quantified Self Dublin, has been doing some interesting self-studies about how various changes in his life affect his blood glucose levels. Blood glucose is typically tracked as part of diabetes care, and there are some excellent emerging tools for convenient tracking without doing finger stick tests. (Although these systems are…
The recent report by Victoria Rideout and Susannah Fox, “Digital Health Practices,Social Media Use,and Mental Well-Being Among Teens and Young Adults in the U.S.” deserves sustained attention for its exploration of the relationship between social media and mental health in teens and young adults. While the study is designed to contribute some realism to the…
Joost Plattel studies chemistry and loves experiments. He discovered while running experiments on himself that the simple act of tracking had a profound affect on how his brain functions. In this talk, Fitting Mental Models, Joost shares some of those discoveries. During the last three years of tracking his food, activity, and productivity, Joost noticed his…
In honor of today being the last day of the existence of Moves, the app from which so many Quantified Self projects drew their location data, I thought I’d post this artwork by Sabastian Meier and Katrin Glinka, who constructed city models based on connecting Moves data with their memories. For discussion of the demise of…
Following Dana Greenfield’s post about her project Leaning Into Grief, it feels fitting to share Mark Krynsky‘s project that contemplates our own mortality digitally. How will our digital lives be archived after we die? (Spoil alert: we are all going to die).Mark Krynsky started a blog about five years ago and began live-streaming. Having his data in…
