The Affective Health project explores mobile services that empowers people to monitor and understand their own stress levels vis-à-vis their everyday activities. By providing users with inspiring visualizations of data captured from body sensors bio-feedback loops are created.
The relationship between activities in the world and the information from the sensor data help users to build meaningful relationships between their experiences and how that affects them. This in turn empowers them to increase control of and relate and deal with stressful events in everyday life.
The mixture of data
We use biosensors that can pick up on measurements relevant to stress symptoms. The measurements have to mirror users’ bodies in ways that make sense to them, and they should also relate to users living their daily life. The biodata we log are: Arousal: the basic manifestation of short-term stress – leading to increase of heart rate, blood pressure, and perspiration. Movement: Instead of representing valence, the movement sensor help on the distinction between periods of arousal due to physical exercise and periods of arousal during rest. Heart rate: We use electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors to measure heart rate since they can be placed in many different places on the body without compromising signal quality. The sensor configuration we use is a Bluetooth-enabled device transmitting the data in real-time to a mobile phone, connected to a triaxial accelerometer, skin conductance, and three-lead ECG sensors. The Sensor company BioPlux have provided us with sensors closely corresponding to our requirements.
Research questions
The research question in the project ranges from specific technical issues regarding collecting sensor data to broad subjective issues related to how the system is perceived and qualities of the experiences that it is intended to create. Some of the research questions in the project tackles issues related to:
- Sensor placement and quality of sensor data
- Algorithms and use of sensor data
- Functionalities, interaction and interface design
- Design qualities such as identification and aliveness
- Reflection and behavioural changes based on the usage of the system
Design journey
In search for a system that allows for reflections and subjectivity we work through a set of design concepts that mirrors the biofeedback and contextual data back to the users in different ways and also organize the information in various temporal concepts.
Our design journey has lead to an important discussion on how to become more mindful, less separated from your own body and its signals, without at the same time conveying an image of the body as a machine that can be “fixed” separately from our”selves”.
