Emotion & Habits: Where’s the Data on How We Feel?
Recently, GigaOm published “Coffee & Empathy: Why Data Without a Soul is Meaningless,” in which author Om Malik argues that consumer habit tracking tools will find their most meaningful, and presumably successful, application when they can interpret the emotional context behind people’s habits.
Malik illustrates this idea by pointing out that Foursquare can track the number of times he has visited his favorite coffee shop, but the real value in this data is in knowing why he chooses this coffee shop over others. It’s his “happy place, [his] one cup (or dozen) of zen.” He argues that when tracking apps can begin to see the emotional patterns behind our habits, then the information can be used to create more “emotive and empathetic” experiences.
Although the article doesn’t discuss self-tracking or the Quantified Self Movement, much of what Malik writes about is the need to understand the emotional narrative behind our data, which is the impetus for the creation of Tech urSelf’s first product, urWell.
When it comes to self-tracking, there is no shortage of apps and devices to help you collect quantifiable data about yourself. But the real question is: how do the habits you are tracking actually make you feel?
We created urWell as a tool to help people delve into their own emotional narratives and understand how their choices about work, play, relationships, personal growth, and health really make them feel.
On the face of it, it might seem like tool we shouldn’t need. Logically, many of us know we would be happier and healthier if we spent less time in the office and more time outside, if we ate better and exercised more, and if we made time every day to appreciate what we already have in our lives.
Yet, I know in my own life it can be a challenge to make smart choices every day.
Recently, I had an interesting conversation with a group of urWell users about making positive life changes. We wanted to know what they thought about urWell, but we didn’t ask for their thoughts on the product right away. Instead, Belinda Liu, Tech urSelf’s CEO and Founder, asked the group to talk about a time they tried to make a big change in their life, why they made the change, and how they did it.
The stories had several common threads.
Almost everyone talked about feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, or unhealthy as the impetus for lifestyle change. When asked how they made life changes and what made the changes stick, nearly everyone talked about the importance of social support and some form of self-tracking as a way to remember what they had done and to hold themselves accountable.
People valued self-tracking as a way to see patterns in their lives, redirect bad habits before they became damaging, and keep up with good habits even when pressed for time or energy. But what really struck me listening to this group of thoughtful and successful professionals was how much they had all struggled with being able to see the emotional narrative behind their own life choices.
They knew they might be working too much, exercising too little, not spending much time on hobbies that rejuvenated them. But only when they became deeply unhappy, set goals for making changes, and measured themselves against these goals could they see how far off track their lives had gone and how this made them feel.
At Tech urSelf, we see a lot opportunity and promise in Om Malik’s idea that the next wave of data intelligence and interpretation will be driven by emotion and empathy. What better way to apply this new way to collect, interpret, visualize, and act on data than with self-tracking in our own lives.
This blog was originally published on the Tech urSelf blog.