Week 2: Quantified Self & Self-Experimentation

Decks from class:

Class

Quantified Self

Readings for this week:

Self-Experimentation: A Call For Change from Behaviorism, Vol. 9(1), Spring 1981. Allen Neuringer.

A Behavior Model for Persuasive Design, BJ Fogg, Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University, 1999.

The Acceleration of Addictiveness by Paul Graham, July 2010.

Assignments for this week:

1. Reactions to this week’s readings. Write a short reaction to each of the readings from this week as a comment to the reading’s blog post.

DUE: 12 NOON SUNDAY 25 SEP.

2. Review QS talks. Goal of assignment: provide experience reviewing a range of QS talks. Review up to 10 different QS talks from around the world and then choose 2 to write a review on. There are two ways to find the videos:

a. QS videos on Vimeo

b. Video highlights from the QS blog

To-Do: Select 2 videos on which to post a review. Create a new post and embed the Vimeo video into your blog post. Some questions to consider. Are objective / quantified metrics always better? Are subjective/qualitative measures always suspect? Is QS a way of discreetly organizing our body? Are we beginning to set up a shared language about the body and the self? What the hell might this lead to? Will this look more like Gattaca? Or something else completely? Can we ever really know our bodies? Can we ever really know our selves?

DUE: 12 NOON SUNDAY 25 SEP. Post to blog. If you don’t use Google docs, save file as PDF with this filename convention: “diyhealth-week2-firstname.pdf” please.

3. Draw a fantasy QS system of instrumentation. The goal of this assignment is to show your conceptual and sketching process. You will draw/sketch, in whatever way you want (hand-drawn or digital or other method — use your imagination), two fantasy QS systems of instrumentation. (a) One is for your body. A QS system that records, senses, measures something about your body. (b) Another is for something other than the body. Something that is a part of how you identify a healthy sense of self. Look at the post-its from this week for ideas. Maybe think about qualitative aspects over quantifiable ones. (2 SLIDES)

Deliverable details:Create a title for each of your fantasy QS systems. If your sketch is hand-drawn, scan it. Create one blog post and attach your 2 slides (or video).

DUE: 5 PM. SUNDAY 25 SEP.