Team: Alisa Avigan, Jiaqi Li, and Julia Rickles

Four week project (Fall 2013): We were challenged to design an object, interface, system or service that used body data. However, body data devices today are limited to "READING" what you just did and then "REPORT" on those actions in some type of quantified analysis.

Solution: The Journey Jacket is designed to take the body data from the user and then responds by triggering a vibrating pattern to guide the users breathe. (photo credit to Julia Rickles)

Process Notes

This project spanned over five weeks, which allowed time for research and to do more than just test a paper prototype. We were able to create personas, affinity diagram our research, semantic differentials, user flows, physical prototyping, and user testing. (View the Slide show for the process)

We constrained our problem space to airport travelers, specifically those who are stressed. Which then lead to the next question how do you deal with stress?

We took two approaches, we looked for historical solutions and we looked for technical solutions. The we researched how past civilizations dealt with stress, which lead us to the American Indian Studies Research Institute where we were fortunate enough to conduct an interview with an expert on the ceremonies of the Lakota. The rituals aimed at reducing stress had the theme of "wombs of the earth" and that lead us to our themes of nurture and care.
What do you do when you are cared for? You calm down, you catch your breathe and you relax. Controlling the breathe became the key.

In order to test this idea we got a hold of an HRV monitor and we used a back massager to simulate the vibration patters that our jacket would send our. Our test subjects were not able to see the monitor (it attached with an ear clip to monitor the pulse) and were given no other instructions other than to breathe with the vibration patterns.

Monitoring the stress states lead us to the use of a measurement called Heart Rate Variability. This is the time in between heartbeats, the more rapid and excited someone becomes, your heart will start to race, your HRV lessens, and the body gets ready for fight or flight. When we get excited, to calm ourselves we take long and slow breaths.

Personal Contributions

We did most of the concepts and research as a team. My research did specialize in the science and feasibility of the heart rate monitors, I contributed to the final sketches, figured out with Alisa and Jiaqi how to physically prototype to test our concept (used a $5 back massager from Target to simulate the vibrations ), and got to conduct and lead the user tests.