Mirroring bodily experiences over time

Abstract

Elsa Kosmack Vaara Kristina HöökThe Affective Health system is a mobile lifestyle application that aims to empower people to reflect on their lives and lifestyles. The system logs a mixture of biosensor-data and other contextually oriented data and transforms these to a colorful, animated expression on their mobiles. It is intended to create a mirror and thereby empower users to see activity patterns and relate these to their experiences of stress. People's different cultural backgrounds and their different physiological and psychological composition give them different perceptions and associations of time. We explore the time dimension of our system through working through a set of different designs that organize events as time going linearly forward, in a circular movement or relating to geographical places. Here we discuss the process of designing a mobile interface for presenting temporal data in a way that allows multiple and subjective interpretation.

Mind the body!

“…Our tests were a mix of Lo-Fi testing [37], fake scenarios in a Wizard of Oz-fashion [11], testing the system on ourselves using an autobiographical design method [29], and making end-users wear the system for a limited time. While testing the system on ourselves may seem unorthodox, it was sometimes the only way we could access relevant data on users' experiences [ibid.].…”

Coupling Interaction and Physiological Metrics for Interaction Adaptation

“…There are multiple examples of studies on the use of such interaction mechanisms in desktop or stationary settings in a diversity of areas, ranging from entertainment to healthcare. The most recent examples of the use of physiological mechanisms in mobile settings stem from the NikeRunning [4] program and from a system which collects physiological data from users with the aim of improving positive emotions in their daily lives [8]. Nevertheless, neither of these approaches addresses some of the most important challenges of mobile environments: constant transitions to/from different settings, interaction with peers, the device's characteristics, to cite a few.…”

Physiological Computing: Interfacing with the Human Nervous System

“…These ambulatory systems [6] may be used to monitor emotional changes Teller, 2004) or health-related variables (McFetridge-Durdle, Routledge, Parry, Dean, & Tucker, 2008;Milenkovic, Otto, & Jovanov, 2006). These systems may trigger feedback to the individual from a mobile device when "unhealthy" changes are detected (Morris, 2007) or the person may review personal data on a retrospective basis (Kosmack Vaara, et al, 2009). The biocybernetic loop is a core concept for all physiological computing systems (Fairclough & Venables, 2004;Pope, et al, 1995;Prinzel, Freeman, Scerbo, Mikulka, & Pope, 2000) with the exception of some forms of ambulatory monitoring [6].…”

“…In the case of ambulatory monitoring, some systems alert the user to "unhealthy" physiological activity use the same kind of sensitivity gradation to trigger an alert or diagnosis. Those ambulatory systems that do not incorporate a biocybernetic loop are those that rely exclusively on retrospective data, such as the affective diary concept (Kosmack Vaara, et al, 2009); in this case, real-time data is simply acquired, digitised, analysed and conveyed to the user in various formats without any translation into computer control.…”

“…The development of muscle-computer interfaces (Saponas, Tan, Morris, & Balakrishnan, 2008) allows finger movements to be monitored and distinguished on potentially any surface in order to provide overt input to a device. Data collection from wearable sensors could be used to monitor health and develop telemedicine-related applications (Kosmack Vaara, Hook, & Tholander, 2009;Morris & Guilak, 2009) or to adapt technology in specific ways, e.g. if the user is asleep, switch all messages to voicemail.…”