This is more of a general purpose rant to figure out my thoughts.
I’m currently working on my thesis, i was ideating how to define and structure the study so that I could get it done as soon as possible and as efficiently as possible, but one thing that struck me numerous times throughout the design was I had no way to collect digital wellbeing data or digital habit data from users, to use in studies. Applications sand blocked the entire thing, and even if you can access it through third party apps, you either have to pay large sums for it, or you just can’t.
I’ve done like a superficial internet search about the various tools that exist. Having been present in the internet usage and digital cultures space for the last 2 years, I have come across and personally used a lot of tools and applications that either prevent you access to certain apps, or entire devices for specific amounts of time. I have tried, forest, opal, BlockSite, Freedom app and a couple more one, they all have a free tier.
The common thing with these apps was they can see my usage data, but they won’t let me export it, even though it’s still my data. There might be certain privacy concerns around it, or they just want you to pay some more money before you get access to it.
But I still don’t understand why operating systems themselves don’t let people export their own usage data, they let you see it, they create beautiful analytics out of it, but they won’t let you export it. That’s just weird.
But, yeah at last years ASPIRE, I was presenting a poster and I talked to someone there and they had a similar problem, they had to let go of 2 years of their work just because they couldn’t get access to these data in a feasible way. As far as I remember, they had to pay around 20k or 2k$ for an app that let’s them do it. I don’t even remember if that fee was to build an app or to purchase one.
But, I also went through some literature and a lot of researchers mostly use self reported measures or digital usage, which are not always accurate. So, this morning at a coffee shop I had this crazy idea why don’t I build something like that. I am at an unique position, I have a computer science background, I can think in systems, I am an okay programmer, I also have knowledge about digital wellbeing and cultures, and maybe I could also find other people interested in doing this.
I feel this is essential for quicker progress in the field of digital wellbeing and digital cultures research. I honestly don’t know if there is something like this already in an obscure place somewhere or if someone else is working on this. But another important and interesting aspect is user concerns, I also want to look at what kinds of data users are comfortable with sharing with researchers, if privacy and anonymity was guaranteed. I feel like this will better help researchers design studies and observe variables that they are more likely to have access to.
Potentially, this endeavour could do two things.
- Create a general purpose test bed for digital wellbeing researchers to utilise.
- Help researchers and me understand what kinds of device usage data and variables , digital device users are comfortable with sharing.
I understand there is a lot to do with this, a structured user research phase, stakeholder reviews, finding interested developers and the biggest problems: funding and figuring out a single solution for all platforms, cause digital devices are wild and with various operating systems you need to various permissions and use various technologies, a lot of things to figure out, but also it’ll be worth going through the effort. I think.