Stress Wearable Project

Project description

During this project, we were working on designing a solution that connects to the Moodmetric Ring and communicates stress data to people suffering from PPS (Persistent Physical Symptoms). The goal of this project was to present stress information to people with PPS in a meaningful, easily understandable way.

Context

Our project was offered by Lectoraat IxD, which in this context was represented by Evelien van de Garde. This project serves as a component of the ongoing Stress Wearables research project, which involves many other researchers and students. Our specific focus within this larger initiative was stress data visualization for people with PPS (Persistent Physical Symptoms).

Why is this important ? In today's fast-paced society, stress has become a common element affecting people's lives. While sometimes stress can be a motivator, it can also have a negative impact on productivity, focus, and general health, especially for people with Persistent Physical Symptoms (PPS), since stress creates a continuous cycle of 'pain causing more stress' and 'stress causing more physical pain'. Stress also affects cognitive processes, making it important to communicate stress data in a way that it provides insights without overwhelming the user.

Our goal was to design a user-friendly solution that presents stress data in a clear manner, enabling users to get insights on their stress levels and even identify potential triggers and patterns.

Results

Throughout the project, we conducted extensive research on our target users with PPS (Persistent Physical Symptoms), the effects of stress on them, new data visualization approaches, and much more. The knowledge gathered from this research is useful not just for our current project, but for the future related projects too.

Based on the findings, we designed an mobile application that visualizes stress data for individuals with PPS. The key outcomes are:

User-Friendly Stress Data Visualization: The research has resulted to a user-friendly interface that effectively presents stress data in a clear and understandable manner.

Real-Time Stress Level Monitoring: Users can instantly see their stress levels throughout the day and take actions to manage their stress

Integration of Activities and Stress Data: One of the important features of this solution is integration of activities with stress data. Users can visualize how their stress levels correlate with different activities or events, providing insights into the potential stress triggers. The majority of Moodmetric's competitors are lacking this component, and even if they do, it is still very much isolated from the stress data, which, based on our literature studies, is one of the biggest issues with existing stress data visualizations. It should be noted that Moodmetric already had a similar component; but, based on our research, it needed to be improved, which is why we propose a new design for it.

Overall, the research has resulted in a mobile app with data visualization that helps individuals with PPS to visualize and understand their stress data, which can assit them on their journey to improved quality of life.

About the project group

Our group is a diverse team of semester 6 and 7 students. We specialize in various areas such as design, full stack development, cyber security, smart mobile technologies, game design, and tech entrepreneurship. Throughout our project, we used Design Thinking method, which allowed us to empathize with the needs of our target audience and explore innovative solutions