A Meta-Synthesis of the Barriers and Facilitators for Personal Informatics Systems

Abstract

Personal informatics (PI) systems are designed for diverse users in the real world. Even when these systems are usable, people encounter barriers while engaging with them in ways designers cannot anticipate, which impacts the system's effectiveness. Although PI literature extensively reports such barriers, the volume of this information can be overwhelming. Researchers and practitioners often find themselves repeatedly addressing the same challenges since sifting through this enormous volume of knowledge looking for relevant insights is often infeasible. We contribute to alleviating this issue by conducting a meta-synthesis of the PI literature and categorizing people's barriers and facilitators to engagement with PI systems into eight themes. Based on the synthesized knowledge, we discuss specific generalizable barriers and paths for further investigations. This synthesis can serve as an index to identify barriers pertinent to each application domain and possibly to identify barriers from one domain that might apply to a different domain. Finally, to ensure the sustainability of the syntheses, we propose a Design Statements (DS) block for research articles.