BraidFlow: A Flow-annotated Dataset of Kumihimo Braidmaking Activity

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Entering a cognitive state of flow is a natural response of the mind that allows people to fully concentrate and cope with tedious, and often repetitive tasks. Understanding how to trigger or sustain flow remains limited by retrospective surveys, presenting a need to better document flow. Through a validation study, we first establish braidmaking as a flow-inducing task. We then study how braidmaking can be used to unpack the experience of flow on a moment-by-moment basis. Using an instrumented Kumihimo braidmaking tool and off-the-shelf biosignal wristbands, we record the experiences of 24 users engaged in 3 different braidmaking tasks. Feature vectors motivated from flow literature were extracted from activity data (IMU, EMG, EDA, heart rate, skin temperature, braiding telemetry) and annotated with Flow Short Scale (FSS) scores. Together, this dataset and data-capture system form the first open-access and holistic platform for mining flow data and synthesizing flow-aware design principles.