15.08.2024New Platform for Research on Digital Device Use (Malte Doehne and Colleagues)

Malte Doehne (UZH Department of Sociology, SUZ), André Meyer (UZH Department of Informatics, IFI) and Thomas Fritz (IFI) have been awarded a DSI Infrastructure & Lab Grant to develop a research infrastructure for collecting user-generated digital trace data. Congratulations!

The newly funded 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. The infrastructure will further support researchers in exchanging their experience from conducting digital device use studies, as well as to 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 is looking for researchers from DSI, UZH or other universities who are interested in leveraging the infrastructure for their own research projects.

For more information and to contact the team, please see here.

Background information

Most people spend a significant amount of time on digital devices, averaging 5.6 hours daily in Switzerland in 2023, and this trend is increasing. Despite this extensive usage, our understanding of how we use digital devices remains limited, particularly regarding the specific activities that individuals engage in and how these behaviors affect societal outcomes as well as individual well-being and productivity. While existing self-monitoring tools have been successful in increasing user awareness and promoting positive behavior changes, they often fall short in terms of privacy, customization, and ease of use. The university-backed 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.

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