We talked about our own personal experiences of health and well-being to identify common themes. We found that we had experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed by options, choices, activities, people, places – the day to day disturbances that shape our levels of stress and happiness.

We initially thought that we would design a system whereby the user would make a list of decisions or items that were causing stress, with an inner loop monitoring their progress as they complete individual items. This system was just too general to be able to model – e.g. every different type of item had a different approach to sensing.

We continued on the theme of stress management, but focused on one item that helped us all manage stress – physical activity. We identified that exercise helped us maintain physical fitness and a sense of rhythm in our lives.

We decided to model a system that would help us monitor our stress levels and define a level of exercise relative to that stress level.

Stress Management, Exercise System

The goal of our system is to help a user maintain their level of stress.

The outer loop’s goal is to help the user maintain a target level of stress by defining an amount of exercise to be undertaken.

• The sensor is a manual test – every day the user assess their stress level from 1-7. For each point on the scale an amount of exercise is defined.
• The system compares the current stress reading with the previous reading.
• If there is a change, the amount of exercise is changed.
• If there is no change, the amount of exercise is maintained.
• The target environment is the amount of exercise planned.
• Possible disturbances include a lack of available time (if we only have 5 minutes to spare, defining one hour’s exercise is problematic)

The inner loop’s goal is to help the user complete the amount of exercise by comparing the amount they have completed to the amount required.

• The sensor is the user’s watch or clock. The user checks the number of minutes of exercise completed against the amount required.
• The system compares the amount completed to the required amount.
• The user exercises for the amount of time remaining.
• The target environment is the amount of exercise completed.
• The Possible disturbances include all the things that get in the way of exercise; apathy, competing time requirements, location

Clip from class