IntimaSea: Exploring Shared Stress Display in Close Relationships

Title of the Paper

IntimaSea: Exploring Shared Stress Display in Close Relationships

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Contextual technology design in HCI and computer science, focusing on stress management, emotional interaction, and the impact of data sharing on intimate relationships.
• Keywords: Stress, stress tracking, shared stress display, intimate relationships, emotional data, social support, biosignals, user experience

Research Background and Issues

• Issues and Challenges:
  • Stress monitoring technologies (e.g., smart wristbands) are primarily used for individual stress management, with limited research on stress sharing in social contexts such as intimate relationships.
  • Quantitative stress data is often difficult for users to intuitively understand, limiting its application in daily emotional interactions and social support.
  • Existing research on stress sharing and visualization primarily focuses on workplace settings and often employs anonymous methods, which are less effective in fostering meaningful social interactions.
• Importance of the Issues:
  • Stress management is deeply embedded in social and emotional factors, and intimate relationships may provide a better context for sharing stress data.
  • Sharing stress can offer emotional support, empathy, and social interaction, with significant potential for alleviating psychological stress.
• Research Motivation and Related Work:
  • Inspired by the "caring-through-data" approach, aiming to enhance social and emotional experiences of "us" through data mediation.
  • Previous studies suggest that social support is more effective in alleviating psychological stress, and stress data can serve as meaningful social cues. However, there is no research exploring the sharing of stress data and its potential role in intimate relationships.

Proposed Solution

• Proposed Solution:
  • Introduced a prototype system called IntimaSea for "shared stress display," which visualizes stress data through an artistic "ocean world" interface, using cartoon-like representations to enhance data comprehension and emotional interaction.
  • Enables users to share personal stress data and interact via multimedia messages, aiming to serve intimate relationships in stress perception, interpretation, and management.
• Innovations:
  • Extends stress data from a single technical solution to a social application, promoting emotional support in intimate relationships through shared stress display.
  • Provides diverse visual encoding schemes for "representing stress" (e.g., using ocean animals to depict stress levels, island sea levels to reflect overall stress).
  • Message bubble design offers non-intrusive visual "floating information," encouraging unobtrusive care and interaction.
• Implementation Steps and Technology:
  • Stress data collected using Garmin wearable devices, with heart rate variability (HRV) as the stress scoring standard.
  • Developed a front-end system based on JavaScript and Fabric.js to implement stress display and messaging.
  • Data synchronized in real-time via API, with options for manual upload and selective sharing by users.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Outcomes:
  • User Experience: Improved users' perception of their own and their partner's stress; provided visually relaxing and intuitive stress feedback through the "ocean interface design"; messaging features were used to express care and intimacy.
  • Social Interaction: Shared stress data became an opportunity for fostering intimate interactions, with stress data seen as social cues for communicating emotional and psychological states.
  • Application Scenarios: Proposed socialized methods for stress management, such as suggesting joint relaxation activities based on stress information or enhancing data interpretation accuracy through discussions.
• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:
  • More effectively integrates social contexts compared to traditional individualized stress management tools, providing social support for stress perception and management.
  • Offers more intuitive and enriched visualization methods, guiding users to transform stress data into meaningful actions through social interaction.
• Experiment and Evaluation Results:
  • Participants (N=19, 9 groups) showed interest in IntimaSea during two rounds of user studies, particularly individuals geographically separated or under high stress, who demonstrated relatively higher usage rates.
  • Users generally found the system reduced the cognitive burden of interpreting stress data, while the messaging feature helped avoid real-time interruptions.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Limitations: Relatively small sample size and limited user groups; research context focused primarily on intimate relationships, without exploring the application of stress sharing in other social contexts.
  • Future Directions:
    • Further study the socialized role of stress data complexity.
    • Explore extending stress display to broader ecosystems, such as integration into existing social applications.
    • Conduct cross-cultural and large-scale user testing to systematically evaluate the potential and challenges of stress sharing.