Design Carefully: Affective App.
Blue Light Therapy is a stress recognition and relief app that detects stress indicators using a facial recognition Application Programming Interface, Face++ API. After measuring a user's stress level, the app then intertwines the benefits of blue light therapy and music therapy for relaxation and stress management. This course project was created by Wu, Q. (team leader), Ho, J., Thu, A., and Tsang, C. at the University of Toronto.
Meaningfully Measuring User Emotions
Users are first prompted to take a selfie using the front camera on their mobile device. Then, the Face++ API captures five types of emotions: sadness, fear, anger, neutral, and happiness. The first three emotions are used to measure a user’s stress level, whereas the latter two are used for comparison against the three stress indicators.
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Based on calculations: if the average scores of the stress indicators (“sadness”, “fear”, and “anger”) are greater than the average scores of the non-stress indicators (“happiness” and “neutral”), the user will be directed to a new screen called the “Stress Room”. In the Stress Room, the effects of blue light therapy and music therapy are synergized. Firstly, blue light helps to reduce systolic blood pressure, decrease anxiety, and increase attentiveness (Stern et al., 2018). To display the blue light, rather than using a static image, a video is added to show light shining in motion. This type of visual stimulation further helps users reduce brain activity, leaving them feeling comfortable and relaxed (Stern et al., 2018). Coupled with sound therapy, the relaxing melody can awaken the ear to brain connection, stimulating the primitive neural pathways that affect our feelings of safety and our social and emotional responses (Slade, 2018). The users can play or pause the accompanying audio at any time, such as until they feel calmer.
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Meanwhile, if the average scores of the stress indicators are less than that of the non-stress indicators, the user will be sent to the “Happy Room”. The Happy Room presents different visual and audio components that aim to reinforce happiness. The video featuring the aquarium with colourful fishes mirrors the user’s happy and calm state.
Technical Communication
In the design of technology, the “value dam” threshold captures concerns strongly held by even a small set of stakeholders impacted by the product. This terminology stems from the value-sensitive design (VSD), a design approach that asserts human values should be comprehensively accounted for throughout the design process. Guided by VSD, Ho, Thu, Tsang, and I used value dams in our Affective App project to create policies for supporting system use. Privacy concerns of direct app users were the first value dams identified. As users may not feel comfortable with their health data and selfies being collected (figure 1), we made the entire user experience anonymous and set out a privacy policy with consent practices to reflect our strict personal information handling (figure 2). Furthermore, I added a disclaimer (figure 3) to address the safety concerns of indirect users like health professionals. It stipulates that the app is not intended for medical use, seeking to limit liability for any damage caused by the content provided.
User Data Collection in the Affective App
Privacy Policy for the Affective App
A Disclaimer for the Affective App
User Data Collection in the Affective App
Usability Testing
Overall, test participants claimed that the app was easy to understand and use, where they were guided through the app “with little to no difficulties”. Yet, another participant suggested that some of the wording could be patient friendlier. We took this suggestion and adopted a person-first language in order to talk about disabilities and differences most respectfully. Looking from the mentality of a patient, someone suffering from mental health issues often refuse to label themselves as a “patient” and seek treatment, especially since the app is not medically authorized to provide diagnosis or even label someone as having mental health issues due to the potential low validity of results. Therefore, rather than being called a “stress identifier”, the app was relabelled as a “stress detector”. We also added a disclaimer on the first screen to clarify that the app is only meant to detect stress and not provide treatment, diagnosis, or medical advice.
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Furthermore, while both participants appreciated that the app provided different media content (video and audio) to help reduce stress, one hoped that the app could provide more resources for coping with stress, such as a list of tips. Based on their response, we decided to add an "information" button to the Stress Room and Happy Room pages that would lead users to the Government of Canada's library of mental health support and resources, where they can find more resources for coping with stress. This external information feature would also prevent the app from being cluttered with information.
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Example documentation of the app's empirical and technical investigation studies: