Phase 2: Journey Map (Final project DIY)

Mission: Breath is all around us. The one commonality among all humans is are ability to breath without effort by using our autonomic nervous system. Breath is automatic, this intrinsically pulls our attention away from it. But what if we had total breath awareness? What if we had a device that gave us visual feedback through out our day to tell us weather our breath was healthy or not? What if we had this during stressful situations, workouts, situations where would need to focus?

In my project, I am interested in the duality of the communication between breath and self-health. Breath has a bi-relational impact on exercise, stress, and disease—by that I mean… breath affectsà exercise efficiency, stress levels, and disease. And stress levels, exercise efficiency and disease affectà breath. If we were able to constantly monitor our breath pattern and rate by getting simplistic feedback we could control these parameters of our lives better and be healthier.

Diagram of duality:

The other piece of the project is to give the user the top-level goal of increasing your breath awareness. If you had a device that gave you constant breath feedback you would have no choice to continually see if your breath pattern and rate was in unhealthy. You could monitor your stress levels, your resting rates during exercise, increase your focus, and visualize if you are beginning to get sick in real time.

The Device: My device will consist of two components a small sensor, which is placed on the upper chest and a feedback bracelet. The two components will be connected to each other via Bluetooth. There will be two measurements collected by the chest sensor– breath rate and breath pattern. Inside the chest piece will be the following:

Chest Piece: 

-Flex/Stethoscope sensor: There is a medical device it calculates the measures rise and fall of the chest as well as the auditory patterns of your breath, which are converted, into sound waves.

-RF Transmitter: that automatically sends sensor data to bracelet. 

Bracelet:

-Bluetooth communication device: that automatically syncs with your sensor affixed on the chest; as data comes in from the sensor it is retrieved by a…

-RF receiver: This receives and analyzes data give by the chest sensor to tell the bracelet the breath pattern and rate readings given the preset parameters.

-L wire:  The final components are three L-wires inside of the bracelet that are lit in different colors depending on the data coming from the sensor via the RF receiver.

Other forms of feedback: There will be vocal cues and visualization of breath feedback available on your smart phones, tablets, and iPods. The device with also sync with your computer to give you feedback on your breath health over time. This would be a key feature in detecting illness and stress in long temporal patterns.

Diagram of system:

Bracelet design: 

I decided make 4 parameters for the breath bracelet. In my research of breath rate and pattern I found that the readings are contingent on two states: whether the person is in a passive or active state. The other two parameters of importance are if the breath is stable or unstable. I decided to go with two values as that in between readings of stablizations are confusing.

Steve mentioned that the design should be optimal and incorporate a visual representation of the desired state and current state. The easiest way to incorporate that in the design is to give the person a binary representation of their states.  If the red light is activated they have a unhealthy breath rate. If the blue light is activated their state is stable. There will also be a feature that lights the bracelet as you breath which give the user direct feed back on their inhalation and exhalation. The other lights represent the Active or Passive mode. The person will be able to hold down that light and the breath light senor will show the user a correct breath rate for the active state. Here is a description of each feedback:

Active State: This parameter is activated when the user is exercising or is in an active mode of any kind. The reason to map state change is because a healthy breath rate and pattern when someone is under differs from that of a person in a passive state.

Passive State: This parameter is activated when the user is resting, sleeping, or inactive.

Unstable Breath Meter: When breath is unstable the lights will be lit red.

Stable Breath Meter:  When the breath is stable the lights will be lit blue.

2 extra features of the Breath Bracelet:

1. Constant Breath visualization Feature: The line of lights will move up and down to your breath rate. So as you breath you are aware of the actual inhalation and exhalation. This allows you to monitor your breath visually as well as mentally.

2. Breath Sycronization Feature: The user can press on the active button light or passive button light (depending on which state they are in) which will cause the light to move up and down at the desired breath rate. The user can the look at the feedback and mimic the healthy breath rate.

Note: There is only one breath stabilization light on the bracelet. I just put the other one in to reflect the two readings it gives.

Top Level Goal: I Breath awareness by monitoring breath.  (breathe awareness)

First Order Feedback:

Sub-goals (included in the second order feedback loops):

- Increase exercise efficiency

- Relieving stress

- Becoming more aware and focused

Second Order Feedback Loops: 

Behaviors: There are two key behaviors:

1. Make user more aware of breath

2. Make user track breath through out the day.

Diagram of Motivation:

 

In terms of the Fogg Model we have a high ability  to be aware of our breath but low motivation. The reason our motivation is low is because breath is automatic to us, we have no reason to focus on it.

Diagram of Behavior Grid:

We can also represent breath awareness in the Fogg behavior grid. Breath awareness begins on a Green Path because the behavior to think about one’s breath is new. We then continue on a purple path asking the person to increase that behavior one time per day. We continue down the same purple path asking the person to increase that behavior for a period of time. Eventually we end at a blue path behavior asking the person to maintain that behavior now on…

Hot triggers:

The bracelet: Gives user immediate feedback of breath health through out the day via colors.

Vocal/push notification reminder on smart phones and iPods: gives the user real time vocal feedback if headphones are on of current breath state. The user will  also receive push notifications from their phone giving them breath state feedback.

Smart phone/tablet data visualization: gives the user graphs of breath health over exercise, time, and resting states (such as sleep, after a workout, etc.)

Computer feedback: gives the user breath health over time. Allows them to see what diseases they are at risk of getting given their current patters. They get to see trends in stress, exercise activity, etc.

—All of these are hot triggers that are inserted in the users daily activities. If they are listening to music, on the phone, on their computer, on their tablet they get a breath reminder. The other key factor is the bracelet, which is a constant hot trigger for them to monitor the health of their breath. In this design the top-level goal is consistently realized because the user is constantly being informed about their breath—as they are informed awareness increases.—

Involving others/self: I currently have Paul keeping a log of his breath rate and pattern during his exercise. I am going to ask Suvi to log her breath rate in terms of stress in twice a day. I am keeping a log of my breath rate and pattern during my exercise. There will hopefully be three logs by the end of this so I can make a data visualization.

Examples in Breath in Life:

-Birds

-Ocean

-People walking in and out of buildings/subways

-volcanoes

-tsunami

-trees in the wind

-the cycle of the seasons changing (example leaves going into the ground, then falling again)