Advanced Topics of Human Computer Interaction
Wave
Brief
The brief for this project was to propose and create a prototype design involving emerging technology to achieve an intended user experience, followed by an evaluation plan to assess whether the intended experience was achieved. I chose to design Wave, an emotion adaptive food sensitivity app, designed to help users identify their problem foods by consistently tracking nutrition, mood and symptoms. The app leverages data collected from both self tracking methods as well as physiological data (heart rate variability and electrodermal activity) through a smartwatch.
The storyboards were used to illustrate the problems that users face when trying to identify problem foods that trigger food sensitivity, such as feeling overwhelmed, getting distracted when symptoms come and go, forgetting to track food and symptoms, trying to cut out multiple foods in one go and not receiving any feedback.
This was used to identify the opportunity: a food sensitivity app that leverages data collected from both self tracking methods as well as physiological data (heart rate variability and electrodermal activity) to provide users with useful feedback, with the goal of prolonged engagement to identify problem foods.
1.0 Story boards
The walkthrough demonstrates how the app will uses the self-reported data and physiological data collected through the smartwatch, what feedback the app gives to the user and the outcome. Each page shows the scenario for a true negative detection, true positive, false negative, true negative and what happens when the app is unable to collect some of the data, eg. the user has forgotten their watch.
2.0 Walkthrough
The final stage for this project was to create an evaluation plan. The plan suggests the main goal to evaluate is:
Does the app encourage users suffering with food sensitivity to maintain engagement by successfully implementing adaptive feedback
This can be further broken down by answering the following questions:
Does the system correctly detect emotions?
Do the suggested recommendations for both positive and negative reports feel relevant and helpful?
Do users show reduced frustration and increased contentment over time?
The plan recommends both formative and summative evaluation, utilising a mixed methods approach to provide a full evaluation.
