Understanding Parenting Stress through Co-designed Self-Trackers

Abstract

New parents often experience significant stress as they take on new roles and responsibilities. Stress management and mental wellbeing are two areas in which personal informatics (PI) research has gained attention, and there is an opportunity to investigate how parenting stress can be mitigated through PI practices. In this paper, we present the results of a co-designed technology probe study through which we deployed individualized self-trackers with new parents. We investigate the stress management topics new parents are interested in tracking and how A- and with what goals - -they engage in self-directed PI practices. Our findings indicate that PI practices can potentially enable parents to: re-discover positive aspects of their everyday lives; identify better-suited stress management strategies; and facilitate spousal communication about shared responsibilities. We discuss how self-tracking experiences for the mental wellness of parents can be better designed.