early thoughts on self-reporting

I am part way through my first 24 hours doing some self-reporting of my stress levels for a class project. We are planing to design a personal informatics tool to help you track and visualize stress levels along with geomapping. The goal being understanding how/where/what might trigger stress and also the things which help reduce it.

Stage 1 - track data anyway you can.

using google latitude on my phone for location and self-reporting for stress.

I note a time, where I am/doing, and give my stress a number on a 10 point scale.

Self-reporting at times you choose leaves lots of room for self-selecting bias. When I notice I am stressed I grab my notebook, but not the times I am stressed and actively DOING something, but only later as I am seething and free. So far I am seeing mostly downsides to this particular measure, so much of the data which might be useful is just missing. Though I think there is something interesting about my own perception of the stress (ei using my own report of the level versus a physiological reading).

hopefully more thoughts and cool updates on our project to come!