Sam Brown | Experience Designer

Students need help managing stress & anxiety...

A team of 3 MSI students and I wanted to build a solution to address tensions and ease the student experience of stress by helping them build skills to target and address their main source of stress: a lack of time and knowledge of priorities.

...Bot Bud (b.b.) can help them manage it.

Our proposed solution is the development of a social IOT device, formulated as a humanoid robot, called “bot bud” or, simply, b.b. This robot has the ability to recognize a person’s stress and help them track and manage it, as well as help them prioritize and focus on the tasks they face in a day.

Our Research & Design Process

Initial Research & Brainstorming:

We began with a brainstorming session to develop ideas around our project with accessibility in mind and a focus on underserved populations.
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Our team considered populations such as those with social phobias and disabilities, but considering our time and resource constraints, scoped the project to focus on anxiety and stress in college students.
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Our group conducted observations of college students in natural settings such as in study sessions at coffee shops and in study lounges. Our observations lead us to understand the various sources of stress in student’s lives including managing long distance or acute relationships, anxiety in social spaces including public speaking, high anxiety due to inability to focus in noisy or distracting environments, pressure to perform, and pressure to engage in social activity.

Initial research led to 3 IOT solutions focusing in on 3 problems.

A “pebble-like” IOT solution to assist with public speaking.

A “Heartbox” IOT solution for partners to help ease long-distance relationships.

Meditation headphones to facilitate focus during study.

Observations led to a broadened focus.

Considering the vast number of stress sources, we broadened our target audience to include a focus on general stress, an often underlying cause of anxiety.

This included an interest in causes of stress, how students destress, and factors that may cause an inability to destress.

A formative study helped us further understand student stress and how our solutions might fit.

‍The study included running a diary study, cultural probes, and a survey. It focused on exploring college students’ stress triggers, how they practice self care, and any barriers they face to de-stressing.

See the Diary Study

‍The diary study explored stress levels over 5 days, noting stress triggers, activities used to destress, barriers, and a thought experiment looking back.

See the Cultural Probe

‍The cultural probe explored the student experience with stress, their environments when studying, and how they would want to practice self-care.

See the Survey

The survey explored student experiences with stress and de-stressing with technology, considering our solution was to be IOT-based.

To analyze the findings of all 3 methods, we reviewed the materials from each and discussed underlying themes utilizing affinity analysis, qualitative response coding, and quantitative analysis.
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High level themes emerged:

Homework and classwork were by far the most stressful for students, followed by work and family.

Lack of time was a common reason for why participants felt they could not de-stress.

De-stressors tended to be focused on experiential qualities and holistic experiences, include a social element, and, when technology was involved, it was used to support the experience.

Participants had mixed feelings about technology and stress. Some viewed technology as a stressor, but most did not see UbiComp technology as stressful, and in fact saw it as supporting their efforts to de-stress.

Analyzing Our Findings

Stress triggers and stoppers were common, but de-stressors were diverse and very individual.

Further ideas for a solution then focused on helping students navigate stress as opposed to developing a solution around de-stressing.

Ideation included brainstorming sessions, drawing inspiration from other IOT stress solutions including the social-bot “Paro, “pocket points,” and “tamagotchi” as well as our initial three ideas.

In order to compare our ideas, we developed an evaluation system with criteria for a solution.

Agency

The system should provide a sense of agency, or control where the user has the freedom to act on their behalf and decide for themselves.

Time-Management

The system should help users manage time better. This could include - having a task-list, breaking tasks into smaller chunks, goal-setting, prioritization, etc.

Stress-Awareness/Reflection

The system should encourage users to step out of stressing about the smaller details, think of the big picture and reflect on their triggers and stress. The system could also help identify stress trends and patterns.

Self-Talk

The system should encourage self-talk and self-assurance.

Take-a-Breather

The system should remind users to take a break, to cope with stress.

Focus

The system should help users fully involve, and enjoy an activity for long periods.

NOT Intrusive, Demanding, nor Authoritative

The system should be respectful of its users and not distract users at inappropriate times and contexts.

Initial Solutions

3 initial solutions emerged from our criteria.

BeFocus

A “smart headphones” device concept that allows users to simultaneously block out the outside world and directly focus on the job to be done. The idea is to enable users to more effectively manage time, increase focus and stress awareness, and increase efficiency. This device also reduces“stoppers” that stop users from getting things done (such as rheumination and procrastination), increase user ability to handle stress, and indirectly increase the time available to destress (I.e. users are unable to destress because they don’t have enough time).

Robot

The "Robot" concept is a smart bot built with an AI to assist students with time-management, self-care, and stress awareness. The robot will also have a social aspect to support social connectedness. The robot is designed to aid the students to stay on task by prioritizing their to-do list and helps them find ways to de-stress when their stress levels reach a certain level.

Mirror

The idea behind Mirror is to encourage stress-awareness and self-reflection. The mirror is a large screen that visualizes the user’s stress levels, which are tracked by a wearable wristband. Users could look at the visualization and think back to what is causing them stress and what they could do to feel better. Mirror also helps in helping users track stress trends and triggers and then visualize the results. Mirror also helps reinforce the idea of “this shall pass” and that stress can be managed.

Consolidating to One Solution

Iterating on those ideas, further consideration allowed us to select elements of all three solutions to comprise a final solution for testing.

The final solution consisted of the first iteration of b.b., a humanoid pocket robot that included a multitude of features including planning and calendar/task management, prompts and refocusing features, stress tracking, and anxiety management.

To explore our solution with potential users, we ran user enactment scenarios to see what they thought.

The enactments were conducted with five participants in a 20-30 minute session, with 2-4 group members in attendance for facilitation. Facilitators took positions for notes, narration, and a “wizard of oz” approach to simulate the robot’s interactions with users. A post-study interview was conducted with each participant to curate additional feedback.

Browse the Enactment Scenarios

User enactments revealed major features preferred by our users.

The enactment scenarios revealed what users preferred around b.b.'s:

Communication Style
Physical Look & Actions
Major Features
Use Frequency
Challenges

See the Enactment Results

They revealed the following "musts" that b.b. should offer:
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1. Varying features for varying needs.
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2. High flexiblity and personalization.
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3. Varying ways to communicate, including audio, visual, utilizing third party devices, lighting, sounds, notifications, etc.
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4. Responsiveness to a multitude of settings, including where it should be quiet and discreet in social situations, and open/more interactive in non social settings.
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5. Quick feedback that is digestible and understandable.
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6. Security and privacy when handling personal data.
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7. An inviting, warm presence, and gamification.

A feature matrix followed to evaluate priorities.

Almost all participants found the “Task-Management” and “Stress-logging” scenarios valuable. A Majority of participants like the idea of a tactile personified "study-buddy-esque" robot and preferred spending lesser screen time/ time with electronics. Participants had varying responses to how they would like to communicate, program and respond to the robot.

Keeping these findings in mind, we each drew sketches and descriptions of our new design ideas. Each idea was then shared, critiqued and discussed. We then consolidated a list of features we found meaningful, from each of these ideas.

See the Feature Matrix

The matrix criteria included the following:

Feasibility
Accessibility
Customizability
Stress Addressing
Agency Providing
Non Intrusive
Personality
Privacy

The highest scoring features to incorporate into b.b:
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Plan ahead prompts.
Customizable communication methods.
Reviewing calendar and to-do list.
Timing tasks / break timer.
Breaking tasks into smaller chunks.
Refocusing prompts.
Reflection prompts.
Task completion celebration.

Final System Concept

Our Solution:

A humanoid IOT pocket bot including features for task management, goal planning, and recognizing and managing stress.

Bot Bud, or, simply, b.b.
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“Your everyday helper bot that helps manage stress -- and your life.”

A table-top social robot (b.b) to help students cope with stress. b.b can communicate using a screen or speech and has two main functions:

Tracks Stress Levels

b.b. automatically tracks stress levels by measuring cortisol levels, galvanic skin response and heart-rate. b.b’s goal is to help users be more mindful of their stress and stress-triggers. b.b would also use this information to remind users to take breaks, encourage self-care, and guide users through relaxation techniques.

Task Manger

b.b. has access to the user’s schedules and calendar, so it would be able to help users break tasks into smaller manageable chunks, prioritizes the user’s tasks, and helps avoid procrastinating through refocusing techniques.

Building a Demo Prototype

Then, we built a med-fidelity prototype.

For the purpose of a prototype, our robot body was 3D printed and used a TFT display to communicate (with facial expressions).

We developed a prototype for a demo to demonstrate the task management features by modeling the timing functionality, speech, and some of its personalized messages. These were the most prioritized features from our users stating that time-keeping and task management were two of the most delightful features.

Ideally, b.b. would have been able to measure the galvanic skin response to measure indications of stress or use a Fitbit/fitness tracker device to gather data. b.b, would also have been able to interact on a physical level, dancing and reacting to touch using servomotors and tilt sensors.

However, due to the limitations of our access to materials, our prototype was built using the 3D model, an adafruit microprocessor and breadboard, and a TFT display. There was a button to model the touch feedback and an audio FX sound board

The final solution would include a mobile application as well through which a user could personalize their interactions and communication methods.

b.b.

Mobile Screen Samples

See The Experience: Demo Video

Reflecting on The Experience

If we had continued...

After our research and prototyping thus far, our next steps would have been to continue on with developing a more functional prototype (i.e. taking out any use of Wizard of Oz techniques) and usability testing. There is still the need for more testing around our ideas to see how they would be implemented in the field. After further testing, we would deploy the product to a developer and engineering team to create a fully working prototype that we would then pose to investors. We would continue to test the robot with potential users, evaluating its effectiveness in reducing stress.
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The limitations of our design are that b.b. is really only to be used in one setting (at home) and reaches a more niche market that has a need for a more social robot experience. Our target audience would have more hands-on needs than other life management systems.