How are you feeling now?
Overview
Emotions are often perceived as abstract and difficult to measure. This study focuses on the importance of managing emotions and the potential benefits of regularly checking and managing emotions to prevent negative emotional states and improve mental health. The aim of this study is to develop a system that helps users understand their emotions and prevent the accumulation of negative emotions by making the emotion management process easier and more immersive. This service aims to help users manage their emotions by providing services that can help them with self-awareness.
Aproach
Self-awareness is the key to manage emotional issues.
We are experiencing multitude of emotions at this very moment. However, how well are we really aware of our own emotions?
Emotions continue to accumulate, especially negative ones, which tend to build up and may eventually explode. However, emotions are constantly sending us signals.
Therefore, might it be possible to proactively address emotional issues by recognizing the subtle signals that emotions send us before they escalate?
I have come to realise that self-awareness is the key to addressing these emotional issues effectively. Regularly examining and understanding our own emotions is essential. This is where this service steps in.
Exploration
"“our emotions flow in a continuous stream, like a river, and to keep up with that we’re constantly regulating them.”-Marc Brackett-
How will it help with self-awareness?
I tried keeping an emotion journal with six others for two weeks, using both an app and a notebook. While reflecting on our own emotions were meaningful and helped develop the service concept, participants often forgot to journal. I realized I needed more enjoyable and motivating elements to stay consistent.
How to help you look into your emotions.
When you are self-aware, you are able to recognize your emotions, understand their causes and effects, and manage them in a healthy way. We looked for a variety of ways to express emotions. Beyond simple emojis or words, there are many ways we actually express our emotions. For example, we drew inspiration from our physical expressions, such as yelling, hitting hard, or stroking something soft. We connected sensory expressions with emotional expressions, such as rough feeling for tense emotions, soft feeling for happy emotions, and coldness for sadness. Then, we took design patterns from here and used them as the main design elements for the app design.
Design
Major functions
The basic structure of the self-awareness service is based on the “Mood meter”. While the mood meter allows users to see many factors on one screen, this service divides the process into steps to help users focus on and reflect on their own emotions.
*mood meter
This tool, created by Dr. Marc Brackett at Yale University, is a visual wheel divided into sections. Each section represents a different emotion, such as joy, anger, sadness, or fear. People can use this wheel to identify and understand their current emotions, which can help them develop healthier coping mechanisms and improve their emotional intelligence.
Design
I designed the app based on major functions and visual elements inspired by emotion expression.
- Energy level
- Mood level
- Labelling the emotions
- Emotional data
- Emotional history
Look into emotion
Users determine whether my emotions are high or low in energy, negative or positive, and select emotions that suit the current emotional state.
Emotion are signals, information and data
I aimed to visually represent the emotional information selected by the user as a single set of emotional data. Drawing inspiration from the human 'eye,' I sought to effectively visualize emotions.
Emotions accumulate
I drew inspiration from the phrase 'emotions accumulate' to depict the accumulation of emotional data. Through emotion records, one can observe changes in emotions over a specific period.
Reflection
While working on the emotion project, I was able to experience the importance of introspection by taking the time to look into my own emotions. Checking my emotions is not a difficult task, but I think it is a meaningful process to do it continuously and to show the overall trend of emotional change.
However, I regret that there are not enough elements to motivate users' voluntary participation. More elements are needed to encourage users to keep records, such as detecting and recording subtle changes in the body, such as heart rate changes, through health check apps such as wearable devices.
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