Routine Computing: A Systematic Review of Sensing Daily Life Dimensions Towards Human-Centered Goals

TL;DR

This systematic review of routine computing synthesizes 203 studies to understand how computational systems can better sense and model human routines for human-centered applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new taxonomy of routine computing, summarizes key challenges, and provides a foundational framework for designing ethical, adaptive, and human-centered systems.

Findings

Identifies four major application domains for routine computing.

Highlights persistent challenges like privacy and data limitations.

Provides a taxonomy focusing on temporal, behavioral, and cognitive aspects.

Abstract

Human routines structure daily life, yet remain challenging for computational systems to understand. This paper presents the first systematic review of routine computing, a previously implicit but increasingly recognized field that focuses on computationally sensing and modeling human behaviors. It synthesizes 203 studies published up to August 2025. The paper presents a new taxonomy of the literature, focusing on temporal structures, behavioral interactions, cognitive aspects, and how variability and deviations are addressed. The common goals of routine computing extend across four major application domains, including accessibility care, the promotion of healthy habits, adaptive and context-aware support, and large-scale population insights. Persistent challenges that limit the design of truly human-centered systems are identified, including the gap between low-level activity recognition and high-level intent, the tension between personalization and generalization, unresolved privacy concerns, and data-related limitations. By consolidating these findings, this paper provides a foundational framework for HCI researchers, outlining principles for designing ethical, adaptive, and human-centered routine-aware systems.