OmniTrack: Designing Flexible and Highly Customizable Quantified-Self Tool

Abstract

Self-tracking practices are becoming increasingly prevalent, but because existing tools does not fit ones tracking needs exactly, and most people do not have the ability to implement their own tools, people tend to appropriate general-purpose tools to track their lives. To help people with self-tracking needs but lack the adequate tools, we designed and developed OmniTrack, a smartphone-based manual tracking application which the user can flexibly customize to fit their tracking needs. By interviewing 12 self-trackers and reviewing 62 self-tracking apps from the App Store, we were able to identify the design space of manual tracking applications. In the paper, we describe the design space and implications, and developed a prototype based on the results and present use case scenarios to demonstrate the usefulness of the tool. We discuss how the tool can be extended to be used in the context of medical environment, especially in the doctor-patient relationship.