A customizable biofeedback smart watch app to help manage anxiety.
Details
My role(s)
Designer
Researcher
Developer
Tools
Figma, Google forms, Illustrator, Arduino, Circuit Python, Premiere Rush
Target audience
People with anxiety who do not have time for hour long meditation sessions or are looking for something to supplement traditional therapy.
Research Methods
Literature Review, Competitive Analysis, Expert Co-creation, Journey Map, Persona, Semi-structured Interviews
Timeline
August ‘20 - May ‘21
Road map
Design challenge
To create an interaction design that is needed in the world and something that we think represents us as a designer and a person.
Lets do some breathing
Experience reset for yourself
Click the watch to get started!
Problem space exploration
When I was told that I had a week to pick a topic for my year long capstone project I initially thought about just continuing my work on pre-emt, however the opioid epidemic was no longer top of mind for me as it was when I started last semester.
The pandemic convinced me to pivot away in a new direction towards something that my own fiance was dealing with as a new public defender trying to protect the rights of the citizens of Marion county through WebEx court meetings; anxiety.
Anxiety is the most prevalent mental illness in the world and that prevalence has gone up significantly as we have all been dealing with uncertainty and increased difficulty in most daily tasks.
Lastly I knew from my explorations with pre-emt that wearable sensors can help break the negative feedback loops that are present in all types of mental disorders from addiction to depression. So I figured that I could use the same type of sensor setup to help those with anxiety.
Czeisler MÉ , Lane RI, Petrosky E, et al. Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, June 24–30, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:1049–1057. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6932a1
Takeaways
Anxiety is the number one type of mental illness in the world
That number is rising due to Covid-19
Wearable sensors could be a useful tool to combat anxiety
Literature review
Links can be found in my notion.
Now that I had an idea of the space that I wanted to explore, I needed to see what the science had to say about it.
It turns out that there are a lot of other researchers that have had the same idea. If you want to see the entire list of my sources that I found during my review you can check out my notion.
Opportunities
Slowing your breathing can directly decrease your anxiety through SNS tone
Inter beat intervals can be used to measure HRV
Short interval breathing training sessions can prevent future anxiety from occurring
Obstacles
People with anxiety have a decreased heart rate variability (HRV) so it is harder to determine when they are anxious
It is hard to get a reliable signal from the top of the wrist, where most smart watch sensors are located
Differentiating between physical exertion and anxiety
Competitive Analysis
Once I had a grasp of what was possible with today’s technology I began looking at what commercially available products exist in the marketplace today.
Again I am not the first person to think about using wearable sensors to create an intervention for people with anxiety.
There are more companies entering the scenes everyday with the FitBit sense dropping in august as the first consumer wearble with electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor which is a method that has proven to be quite robust at detecting anxiety.
Opportunities
There seems to be an opening in the market for a short interval intervention for anxiety, with most companies going for more involved approaches.
The mental health wearable device field is growing quickly and there is a lot of excitement around it.
There is a lot of open source software and hardware being created by DIYers
Obstacles
There are already so many competitors in this space.
Companies like FitBit and Apple know what is going to be in their devices before they are released, so they get a head start on designing for those new sensors before I do.
Expert co-creation
Showing our planned biofeedback visuals and how we have the pybadge wired to the bread board and where the ECG leads are placed.
While going through this exploration process from a design point of view I have also been attempting to create a real life wearable in my wearable sensors class. Me and my team are using an Adafruit PyBadge, spark fun ECG converter and some ECG leads, while coding it in Python.
It is not going to be something that can be worn around all day, but we have some promising results that show it might be able to detect anxiety in a seated person.
While creating our prototype I have had a lot of time to talk about the feasibility of my designs with my professor Gregory Lewis who has spent time studying the relationship between HRV and anxiety.
Opportunities
We have shown that it is possible to detect anxiety at a reliable rate.
Biofeedback has been shown to be effective at increasing the effectiveness of breathing exercises.
Such a system can be created cheaply and shows the ability to scale well
Obstacles
There is a lot of accuracy lost when you try to measure physiology through a wearable device.
People can start to distrust a system quickly if it appears to them that it is not giving accurate readings.
Mid term pin up
Half way through the semester we did a catch up presentation via a virtual poster presentation where I received some great feedback from both my classmates, my professor and an industry mentor.
Comments I wrote down
There is no need to expand the scope to a larger anxiety treatment program, keep it simple and work on really drilling down on the minutia.
People liked the concentric circles.
Try to involve the body more, use the biofeedback watch as a translator so as to create a conversation between the wearer and their body.
After coming back to the project from the midterm review, I decided that I had narrowed my scope enough to start asking questions of actual people.
Survey
My goal with this survey was to figure out how what causes anxiety for most people and how they deal with it, as well as how they would feel about a biofeedback intervention, specifically seeing your heart rate and watching a breathing timer.
Opportunities
The vast majority of people think that a breathing timer would help them control their breathing.
Most people experience anxiety when they are in a controlled environment, like their house or school, where reliable measures are easier to get.
Many people are stressed about time and future so they might want an app that can help them feel reassured quickly.
Obstacles
People are split on whether or not being able to see their heart rate will help or hurt
People seem to experience anxiety everywhere, which means a lot of variables
Semi-structured interviews
Once I had gotten some broadly applicable data from the survey, I reached out to a few friends and colleges that I knew to have anxiety. I scheduled times to talk and asked them a few questions and then proceeded to have some really nice long conversations.
Questions
How does your anxiety manifest?
What strategies do you use to cope?
Would you use a smart watch that can detect anxiety? and why?
“When things get bad I just start taking stock, asking myself easy to answer questions; Is this going to kill you? Are you going to starve? Is your neck tensed?”
“I would use it, but I would want it to be super customizable like I would want to choose how and when I get notifications.”
Takeaways
Customizability is key
Everyone’s anxiety manifest differently
Anxiety is exhausting and we can’t add unnecessary burdens on top of that
Evolution of the design
Initial idea
I started by thinking about the limitations of my circular smart watch and how I could represent a fluctuating heart rate/anxiety level within that space.
Adding a breathing timer
I added a more explicit breathing timer based off a suggestion made by my professor who is an expert in biofeedback and made the case for decreasing cognitive load while doing deep breathing.
Cleaning up the design
Next, I showed my design to a group of fellow designers and they suggested that I remove the outlines and make the icons more recognizable.
Notifications
I had to walk a fine line with notifications. Too little and they will be ignored, while too much could cause more anxiety.
Creating the ocean
Ever since the introduction of the blue breathing circles I wanted a way to represent a gentle eb and flow of breath. What better than waves on a beach?
Don’t overthink it
After several different try’s with non confrontational phrases and comforting suggestions. I could’nt find something that worked, so I went back to basics.
