Traeddy

Abstract

Commuting by car can be stressful, especially unexpected traffic jams may result in feelings of loss of control and social disconnectedness. In this paper, we present Traeddy, a teddy bear augmented with embedded technology, which serves as a wellbeing companion for car commuters in case of traffic jams. Traeddy is capable to help, for example by notifying relevant contacts about traffic jams and potential delays. We describe in detail the design process, including 20 contextual inquiries and report the evaluation of Traeddy through an online survey with 102 participants and a field study evaluating Traeddy with three commuters and two contacts in the field. The results of the field study indicate that Traeddy has a positive impact on the relationship between the commuter and the notified contact. Furthermore, the majority of the online participants anticipated Traeddy to be useful and to support their wellbeing in traffic jams.

Smart City and High-Tech Urban Interventions Targeting Human Health: An Equity-Focused Systematic Review

“…Similarly, these considerations were central in the concepts, designs, and evaluations of the included articles. Examinations of context-orientated outcomes were observed in the evaluations of exercise opportunities for car commuters in traffic situations [82], commuters' stress and perceived problems during trips to work as monitored by a travel companion [83], commuting stress in different simulated situations (e.g., city conditions, highway conditions) that drivers are commonly exposed to [84], commuters' mindfulness during the course of trips [85], and commuter support via exposure to different themes (e.g., natural environments, urban scenes) based on a mood-sensing steering wheel [86]. Additionally, in commuting activities, lighting systems for pedestrians were investigated, assessing their impacts in numerous areas, such as urban (non-residential), leisure, residential, and traffic or commuting places [74].…”

Honeypot

“…However, most of them have focused on increasing productivity by, for example enabling users to work on the go (e.g., [22,19,2,17]). Instead of using ubiquitous technology to solely improve productivity, we decided to design for psychological wellbeing by following the Positive Computing approach, which was introduced by Calvo and Peters [5] and applied in some commuting projects (e.g., [20,23]. They describe an approach of developing technology to improve the psychological wellbeing of users by focusing throughout the user-centered design process on well-known wellbeing determinants (i.e., positive computing factors), such as relatedness, empathy, and positive emotions.…”