WorkJam from Michelle Boisson
WorkJam is a system that helps regulate your mental energy with music while you’re working. It listens to your brain activity and responds with smart song selections to keep you in the creative flow.

Michelle’s supporting material

3gthr from Myles Recny
Wireless synchronization of your insula cortex with that of two others, promoting emotional stability.

http://3gthr.com

Supporting material from Myles

Soma Scent from Evan Emolo
A system for problem solving in your sleep.

Evan’s supporting materials

Incensor from Dong Ik (D.I) Shin
Incensor is a mobile digital relaxation therapy device inspired by incense meditation process to maximize your comfort by controlling your breath.

D.I.’s supporting material

Sleeping Pillow from Hyeyoung Yoon
Sleeping Pillow enables you to fall asleep faster by helping you to breathe with regular intervals.

Hyeyoung’s supporting material is here, here, and here.

Hakuna Matata from Jihyun Lee
The Hakuna Matata monitors the subject’s biofeedback and recommends the most optimized ways to relieve their stress based on their preference, history of stress management and location information.

Jihyun’s supporting material

Test Run from Blythe Sheldon
What if programming were a conversation?

Blythe’s supporting material

Rosie from Sam Brenner
A search engine for emotions.

Sam’s supporting material

Critiques
Please come in Monday prepared to present to the class in 5 minutes or less the following:

1. Show us through the use of some kind of model various aspects of the current system that you are seeking to improve for the final project.

For example, I’m really interested in finding ways to walk more. So, I would model all the cybernetic components of my daily commutes in NYC. I would show how time, distance, deadlines, location, tools (e.g., shoes), city infrastructure, etc. contribute as a system to my ability (or inability) to commute by walking. I would show where feedback is broken. I would model a few sensors and their variety. I’d do the same with actuators. I’d show goals, disturbances, etc. And I would show the limitations of the system as I understand it today.

2. Then show us how you’ve explored ways of intervening on the current system as a designer. You don’t need to have a solution yet but instead walk us through all the different components of the system that you might improve with a design intervention.

In my example above, I would talk through a bunch of ideas about a design intervention that (1) helps set daily walking goals, (2) improves the ability to walk, (3) improves the feedback loop, (4) improves the sensing including the variety of the sensing, (5) minimizes or prevents disturbances that set me off track, etc.

How to present…

(a) You may use the whiteboard to draw your model but you’ll need to practice so that you can do all this in under 5 minutes on Monday.

(b) Draw your models out on large paper beforehand (bigger than 11 x 17).

(c) Prepare a slide or two beforehand but email them to me before class so I can have them uploaded to the class laptop.

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Nov 11

You will employ techniques, frameworks, concepts and ideas covered in the course. These should include but not be limited to:

• Ideas around reframing the meaning of health
• Speculative design (our weekly headers)
• Quantified self, self-tracking & self-experimentation
• Fogg Behavior Model & behavior design
• Shaping behavior through reinforcement (Don’t Shoot the Dog)
• Interpersonal persuasion techniques
• Habit formation
• Cybernetics

itp-final-project

MODELING

1. Current state. Think about and explore what the current state of your topic of self-care looks like. Model what some of the current states look like including where the systems are breaking down.

Draw and develop as many models as you need to show the process of your exploration through modeling the various systems that are at play in your area of interest.

2. Goals. What are the higher order goals of your system? In other words, what is your goal of self-care?

3. Begin to identify all the specific components of the system and their different functions. Sketch and diagram in an exploratory way to help you work through different scenarios.

4. Describe the components in cybernetic terms including goals, sensors, comparators, actuators, etc.

5. Visually represent the relationships between components.

6. Start exploring titles for your system.

As you explore models of the current state and models for the future state, they should help the audience answer these kinds of questions:

a. What is the system and what is the environment. Where is the boundary between the system and its environment?
b. What are the components of the system that are important and relevant? These are ones that are required to understand how the loop of goal-action-feedback is closed.
c. How is information passed between components and what form. For example, how does the information that the sensor generates get passed to the comparator and then how is that information passed to the actuator?
d. What is the goal (desired state) of the system?
e. What kinds of forces might disturb the system or push it away from its goal?
f. What does the system measure and how?
g. What part of the system matches the current state (feedback) to the desired state (goal)?
h. What part of the system determines its response to its environment?
i. How does the system respond to disturbances?

MEASURING

Instrumenting Your Self-Care System
If we can’t measure it (sensing), we can’t change it. Self-tracking can provide a lot of insights about your behavior but self- tracking itself is a behavior and can be difficult to make happen consistently. QSers have high motivation and have the ability to make their own self-tracking tools. That may not be you. Integral to instrumenting your self-care system, there will be some kind of tracking component. But there are many ways to get at this. Ambient and passive tracking offers a different alternative. Involving others in various aspects of instrumenting you is another approach. Other approaches we probably haven’t even thought about.

You are to design a self-tracking component into your system so that it’s something you do habitually. Something that’s easy to collect and something that affords insight and learning, i.e., helps you compare a current state to a desired state.

Review your notes from the lecture this week by Fred Muench. Begin exploring different ways to instrument your system of self-care. Push yourself here. Go beyond what you expect measuring to look like. Sketch, model, take pictures, prototype, mockup ways of instrumenting and measuring.

DELIVERABLE: This should be any form you want that shows diagrams, sketches, models, images, narrative, etc.

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 28

Imagine that you are going to write a brief chapter on the aesthetics of use for an upcoming book about health and health care innovation. Borrowing from themes outlined in Dunne’s chapter, research and find 3 projects that exemplify what Dunne calls “para-functionality.”

Post your brief chapter as a comment to this post with your entry. Include images, links and text.

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 21

In this week’s individual project, you are to put together a response consisting of words, ideas, diagrams, sketches, etc. that help form your notion of self-care.

* How do you define health (and self-care) for you?
* What’s important to you about your health?
* What do you want to work on that improves your health?
* What does a healthy moment (or day/month/year) look and feel like to you?
* What behavior do you want to change?

Look at these different components of a person’s health and well-being.

* Body
* Mind
* Relationships
* Money
* Work
* Environment
* Happiness

Are there any that are missing? What do you already do in terms of self-care for each of these components? What do you wish you could do more of? And what don’t you do but wish you did? What kind of experiences might you create that would inspire you to be as healthy as possible?

Think of yourself as a designer of your own health.

Your deliverable should be a blog post of significant length (much more than just a comment). Respond to the questions above, think about what you’ve learned, read and watched in class to date. Revisit the weekly header archive. Re-read texts that inspired you. Rework your fantasy QS systems. Pull from what you learned in your group Behavior Design Challenges.

I respect that you may not want to share your response on the public blog. If so, please email me your response.

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 21

Tell us why you chose the sermon, what you learned, what, if anything, you heard that you’d consider incorporating into a system of self-care as an idea, a method, a design constraint, etc. Include the video’s title and link.

Comments/reviews from this week

The School of Life

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 14

Assignment: You are to write/create a reaction to the this article. Do this as a comment on this blog post so that I can easily keep track of it. Your comment may point to your blog.

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 7

Assignment: You are to write/create a reaction to the this article. Do this as a comment on this blog post so that I can easily keep track of it. Your comment may point to your blog.

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 7

DUE: By Midnight Sunday, Oct 7