I don't mind being logged, but want
to remain in control: a field study of
mobile activity and context logging
Tuula Kärkkäinen, Tuomas Vaittinen,
Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila
CHI 2010
Lifelogging
• Lifelogging: recording information about
person’s activities and content of what was
done/said, etc.
• Lifelogging with smartphones: GPS, bluetooth,
WiFi, messages, phone calls, web browsing
history, music, voice calls, etc.
• Motivation: so far no extensive UX studies on
lifelogging
Study Setup
• 13 participants w/ 8-11 weeks (in Finland)
• Study started at the 6th week (till 9th week)
• Nokia N95 phone with the following setup:
– ShoZu: getting GPS coordinates to the photos and
videos and for uploading them to Flickr
– Simple Context Collector:
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Location tracking data (GPS, GSM cell IDs)
Bluetooth scanning data
WiFi scanning data
Voice phone calls
Text messages
Music tracks
Study Setup
• Web application for browsing the logged information
• A user can share data (photo, video, location, music) with
friends (displayed in the lifeline view)
(Map View)
Study Setup
• Participant setup:
– Group 1: 4 males + 1 female (all close friends)
– Group 2: 2 brothers who share the apt
– Group 3: acquaintances (4 males + 1 female)
• Participants were interviewed twice
• Quantitative survey at the end of the trial
– AttracDiff 2: pragmatic quality, hedonic quality, etc.
– Roto & Rautava: utility, usability, social value,
enjoyment
General experiences on mobile phone
activity logging
• Users were only a little disturbed by the logging
• After the logging client had been running on the
users’ phones for a few days, users stopped
paying attention to the logging.
• Logging created positive experiences for users
“…In a way you can analyze your lifestyle more. And
similarly what your friends are doing, you can find
common interests that you might not have realized
before.”
• Yet, there are still some concerns with battery
consumption and privacy violation
Experiences on the Logged Content
Types and Actions
• The logged data makes me curious: 6 (mostly
agree)
• The system logs all the data I want: 4.5
– Users want to log more information (e.g., status,
video calls, traffic etc).
• The system logs data that I don’t want in the
questionnaire: 4 (neither agree nor disagree)
Sense of Privacy
• Most of the users felt that their privacy was not
threatened, despite using the logging system
• Yet, people concern with potential leakage (e.g., stolen
password?)
• Users want control what to log and when to log (even
uploading, deleting); i.e., fine-grained control preferred
• Text messaging is deemed to be most private (some
didn’t want to log at all)
• People shared photos (among friends via Flickr)
• Few shared location tracks with friends (e.g., trip
information sharing)
Changes in User Behavior
during the Trial
• Awareness of the data logging encourages me
to actively gain new experiences: 5 (mostly
agree)
– Logging increased communications among friends
– Logging encouraged taking more photos and
playing with GPS log data
• Awareness of the logging makes me restrict
my doings: 2 (mostly disagree)