Designing for Spiritual Informatics: Exploring a Design Space to Support People's Spiritual Journey
Caroline Claisse · Designing Interactive Systems Conference · 2024
Just over ten years ago, research in Personal Informatics investigated the Quantified Self movement and highlighted the potential and pitfalls of using self-tracking technologies to improve one's life. Since then, a rich body of work has contributed with critical views and design considerations for designing self-tracking technologies to improve one's health and wellbeing. Most recently, HCI researchers have highlighted a trend for Spiritual Informatics but work in religious and spiritual (R/S) contexts is rather limited, highlighting a gap in understanding how self-tracking technologies could be designed for R/S practice. This provocation presents a critique of two market exemplars that incorporate tracking functionalities for monitoring and supporting prayer or worship activities in two R/S contexts: Catholicism and Islam. These exemplars are discussed in light of previous work on Personal Informatics to critically conceptualise an interaction design space for supporting R/S practice and people's spiritual journey.