Carnegie Mellon Engineering

Personal Informatics Browser

Anind K. Dey, Computer Science-Human Computer Interaction Institute

The Personal Informatics Browser (or PI Browser) is a tool that people can use to explore multiple kinds of data together in one interface. The PI Browser has the following components:

  • An API for developers to create widgets that show visualizations of people's data.
  • An API for developers to create "buckets" of data that can be visualized together with other buckets of data.
  • An integrated dashboard where people can see multiple widgets together.
    A repository of widgets where developers can add widgets that they have built and where users can find existing widgets.



A critical part of the PI Browser is the use of the API to build widgets/buckets for different kinds of personal data. There are many existing personal informatics tools for which widgets would need to be made. The CIT Honors student will assist in the following ways:

  • Determine how to communicate with APIs and services of existing personal informatics tools (e.g., login, fetch data from feeds, API calls).
  • Retrieve data from APIs and services.
  • Create visualizations of the data.
  • Integrate the widget the PI Browser.

By participating in this project, the CIT Honors student will benefit in the following ways:

  • Learn how to develop web-based tools (e.g., Javascript, HTML, CSS, Rails)
  • Learn how to visualize data (e.g., observing how data are currently visualized, reading Tufte on visualizations)
  • Contribute to the growing number of people developing personal informatics tools.
  • Help people become more aware of their behaviors and habits.