Quantified self

Instrumentation and analytics for body and soul. Punk DIY precision medicine.



Other people have written much more about principled self experimentation, so I will not. Here are some links though.

Obligatory: The tragic morality fable, Seth Roberts’ Final Column: Butter Makes Me Smarter.

Subjective things

Measuring moods? See the Experience Sampling Method (Verhagen et al. 2016; Hektner, Schmidt, and Csikszentmihalyi 2007) or Swan (2013).

Bio-markers

See bio-markers.

Tools

  • A set of watchers that record relevant information about what you do and what happens on your computer (such as if you are AFK or not, or which window is currently active).
  • A way of storing data collected by the watchers.
  • A dataformat accomodating most logging needs due to its flexibility.
  • An ecosystem of tools to help users extend the software to fit their needs.

References

Brien, C. J., and C. G. B. Demétrio. 2009. Formulating Mixed Models for Experiments, Including Longitudinal Experiments.” Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics 14 (3): 253–80.
Chrisinger, Benjamin W. 2020. The Quantified Self-in-Place: Opportunities and Challenges for Place-Based N-of-1 Datasets.” Frontiers in Computer Science 2.
Corti, Kevin, Geetha Reddy, Ellen Choi, and Alex Gillespie. 2015. The Researcher as Experimental Subject: Using Self-Experimentation to Access Experiences, Understand Social Phenomena, and Stimulate Reflexivity.” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 49 (January).
Daskalova, Nediyana, Karthik Desingh, Alexandra Papoutsaki, Diane Schulze, Han Sha, and Jeff Huang. 2017. Lessons Learned from Two Cohorts of Personal Informatics Self-Experiments.” Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 1 (3): 1–22.
Dulaud, Paul, Ines Di Loreto, and Denis Mottet. 2020. Self-Quantification Systems to Support Physical Activity: From Theory to Implementation Principles.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17 (24): 9350.
Feng, Shan, Matti Mäntymäki, Amandeep Dhir, and Hannu Salmela. 2021. How Self-Tracking and the Quantified Self Promote Health and Well-Being: Systematic Review.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 23 (9): e25171.
Fitzmaurice, Garrett M., and Caitlin Ravichandran. 2008. A Primer in Longitudinal Data Analysis.” Circulation 118 (19): 2005–10.
Hektner, Joel M., Jennifer A. Schmidt, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 2007. Experience Sampling Method: Measuring the Quality of Everyday Life. Experience Sampling Method: Measuring the Quality of Everyday Life. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc.
Heyen, Nils B. 2020. From Self-Tracking to Self-Expertise: The Production of Self-Related Knowledge by Doing Personal Science.” Public Understanding of Science 29 (2): 124–38.
Karkar, Ravi, Jasmine Zia, Roger Vilardaga, Sonali R Mishra, James Fogarty, Sean A Munson, and Julie A Kientz. 2016. A Framework for Self-Experimentation in Personalized Health.” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 23 (3): 440–48.
Pelayo, Verónica Rivera. 2015. Design and Application of Quantified Self Approaches for Reflective Learning in the Workplace,” 358.
Roberts, Seth. 2004. Self-Experimentation as a Source of New Ideas: Ten Examples about Sleep, Mood, Health, and Weight.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (02).
Swan, Melanie. 2013. The Quantified Self: Fundamental Disruption in Big Data Science and Biological Discovery.” Big Data 1 (2): 85–99.
Taylor, Sara, Akane Sano, Craig Ferguson, Akshay Mohan, and Rosalind W. Picard. 2018. QuantifyMe: An Open-Source Automated Single-Case Experimental Design Platform.” Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) 18 (4): 1097.
Verhagen, Simone J W, Laila Hasmi, Marjan Drukker, J van Os, and Philippe A E G Delespaul. 2016. Use of the Experience Sampling Method in the Context of Clinical Trials.” Evidence-Based Mental Health 19 (3): 86–89.
Zenner, Alexander M., Erwin Böttinger, and Stefan Konigorski. 2022. StudyMe: A New Mobile App for User-Centric N-of-1 Trials.” Trials 23 (1): 1045.

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