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The Digital Device Use Self-monitoring Platform (D2USP) establishes an infrastructure for research that enhances our shared understanding of digital device use and its impact on society, individual well-being and productivity. The D2USP supports both researchers and citizens by offering a privacy-considerate, customizable, and user-friendly data-logging and self-monitoring software for both personal use and academic research.
Most of us spend significant amounts of their time on digital devices, on average 5.6 hours each day in Switzerland in 2023, with an increasing trend. Despite this extensive usage, our understanding of how we actually use digital devices remains very limited to date; including the specific activities individuals engage in and how these behaviors impact their well-being and productivity. A better understanding of people’s digital device use allows researchers to identify patterns, to develop effective interventions as necessary, and to promote sustainable device use, productivity, and well-being. Relatedly, more and more citizens are interested in developing a better understanding of how their digital device use habits impact themselves, so called self-monitoring.
While existing self-monitoring tools have shown success in increasing user awareness and promoting positive behavior changes, they often fall short in terms of privacy, customization, and ease of use. The D2USP addresses these shortcomings by offering a robust, privacy-first platform that caters to the needs of diverse research disciplines and promotes long-term user engagement through personalized insights.
Researchers will benefit from the infrastructure by receiving PersonalAnalytics, a ready-to-use, extensible self-monitoring software to capture participants' digital device use data and self-reports. By integrating this software in their studies, researchers can collect rich behavioral data in a non-intrusive and privacy-considerate manner, and even conduct small interventions through a retrospection and experience sampling components. The infrastructure will further support researchers in exchanging their experience from conducting digital device use studies, as well as to properly onboard study participants, motivate sustained participation, and allow privacy-considerate data sharing with the researchers through an integration with the DSI Data Donation Lab.
The D2USP platform is funded by the Digital Society Initiative (DSI) of the University of Zurich (UZH). The project team (see below) are looking for researchers from DSI, UZH or other universities who are interested in leveraging the infrastructure for their own research projects. Please contact Dr. André Meyer or Dr. Malte Doehne in case of interest or questions.
Project duration: 01.09.2024 – 31.08.2026
Contact person: Dr. André Meyer (UZH, Department of Informatics) & Dr. Malte Doehne (UZH, Institute of Sociology)
Project Team
Dr. André Meyer is senior researcher at the Human Aspects of Software Engineering Lab (of the Department of Informatics). His research focuses on developing digital interventions for software developers and other knowledge workers to increase their awareness on or foster productivity, focus & flow, and well-being, through persuasive technologies such as self-monitoring, self-reflection and goal-setting. With FlowLabs, he is advising companies and teams to implement hybrid work in a sustainable way.
Dr. Malte Doehne is senior researcher at the Department of Sociology (SUZ) of the University of Zurich. Among others, he specializes in empirical social research design and has extensive experience in advanced data analytics and interdisciplinary research. For the D2USP, he develops and supervises field studies on computer use across different societal contexts of knowledge production, centering around the identification of salient device use patterns and their impact on user well-being and efficacy.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fritz is Associate Professor at the University of Zurich. Thomas heads the Human Aspects of Software Engineering Lab at UZH that focuses on empirically studying software developers and on using personal and biometric data to improve developers' productivity and well-being. For his research, he actively works with international companies, including Logitech, JetBrains, ABB, and Microsoft. Learn more about his group’s research at hasel.dev.
