Supporting Social Interactions with an Expressive Heart Rate Sharing Application

Abstract

The present work explores the social dynamics of expressive biosignals: leveraging wearable technologies to introduce sensed physiological data as a means of clarifying the emotional or psychological processes underlying our subjective experiences. We developed an Android application that linked to a wearable heart rate sensor and allowed for the direct sharing and real-time broadcasting of users’ heart rate via text messaging. We deployed this application in a two-week field study to investigate the contextual triggers, perceptions, and consequences of users’ sharing behaviors. The study (N=13) utilized a combination of Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) and qualitative interviews to discover the situations in which users were more or less likely to share their heart rate with contacts, and the subsequent interactions that occurred after sharing. The results revealed that participants used heart rate sharing as a means to express emotions and provide daily updates, as well as simply a novel and playful form of communication. They reported a variety of communicative consequences of their sharing as well as specific logistical and psychological barriers to sharing. The implications of these results for the design of expressive biosignal sharing systems for supporting positive social interactions are discussed.

Animo

“…We made this decision to inform our research questions, allowing participants to flexibly define the animos to understand how they would create those definitions. Additionally, prior work highlights the importance of allowing people to create meaning together from their biosignals [38]. Finally, participants could leave and use Animo freely for two weeks.…”

“…Janssen and colleagues, for instance, demonstrate that the sound of a heartbeat can increase feelings of intimacy and closeness [27]. Sharing heart rate can increase social connectedness, where it can become an emotional expression, a means to gain awareness about another person's context, or simply a playful way to interact and feel present with another person [21,38,53].…”

“…Previous studies demonstrate that simply showing heart rate as a raw value can limit expressiveness and appeal, and can be difficult to understand [8,38]. Thus, inspired by the popularity of mood rings, we chose to represent heart rate as "mood, " to guide engagement and understanding.…”

“…Tapping on it will play its animation. Given privacy concerns around sharing biosignals [37,38], users can explicitly and sporadically share their animos as they please. To encourage sharing, the watch occasionally vibrates when their animo state changes.…”

“…Recent research shows that sharing biosignals like our heart rate can provide social cues about our emotions or activities. By using these expressive biosignals to convey our internal experiences, we can potentially become more aware and understanding of each other [21,23,38,53].…”