Introducing SAL, simple, situated, ambient loggers, for personal goals

Long term goals such as healthy ageing, diet and exercise demand consistent, repeated effort over long periods of time. While such goals are widely recognized as important, many people find it very hard to achieve them. Some of the key challenges include maintaining motivation, establishing habits, setting personal goals, monitoring progress and tackling forgetfulness. As a way to tackle these challenges, we introduce SAL (simple, situated ambient loggers). Their conception and design is grounded in theories of self-regulation. Users can situate a SAL logger within their environment to support self-regulation, by remembering, logging and self-reflection to help them achieve their long term goals. Our contribution is to propose this new class of personal loggers.