The Affective Health mobile application and biosensor wristband is designed to engage people in reflecting upon their behavior and emotional reactions in everyday life. Affective Health mirrors physical movement, skin conductance and users’ subjectively experienced energy level that they enter themselves. Colors and shapes visualize these three measurements in real time fluently flowing into an animated history of old data, allowing for comparison between different events and changes in users’ bodily reactions.
Exposure to high stress levels for extended periods of time endangers health and may lead to states such as being ‘burnt out’ but also to physical diseases such as obesity, diabetes, or high blood pressure. Today stress related diseases are increasing world wide.
With Affective Health users can enter a biofeedback loop, as their emotional, bodily reactions are mirrored in realtime. For example, taking a deep breath and seeing the color of the spiral smoothly change from a strong redcolor, down to calmer and calmer colors as picked up by the arousal measurements from the biosensor wristband. From what is mirrored in the interface users can recognize patterns and start figuring out what excites and calms them. It becomes of vital importance to portray our selves pulsating, alive, and subjective. In a sense, we are putting bodily and mindful practices next to one-another, into a whole – stepping away from a dualistic perspective on body and mind.
The project is funded by SSF (The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research) and the Mobile Life centre (http://www.mobile-life.org/).
Source: SICS
