Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve? EmoWri: A Wearable Tool to Start Sensitive Conversations : A Case Study with Parents and their Teenage Children

Sammanfattning

Sharing one’s emotions is the first step in taking care of one’s mental health and well-being. Teenagers struggle to open up and share their feelings, making them more vulnerable to mental health conditions extending into adulthood. Researchers and designers have been looking for new solutions to support users' health. One solution is wearables. These technologies need to be explored to better understand users’ needs and their behavioral changes to create a more beneficial user experience. One way to deal with emotions for teenagers is through conversation, however, it can be difficult to start these conversations. In this paper, the potential of a wearable as a tool for triggering communication about emotions is investigated. This study was based on a Research through Design (RtD) methodology and was carried out through a user-centered approach by using participatory design. The case study was conducted with a family of two parents and their two teenage children. By using the methods of cultural probes, interviews, and a co-design workshop, a concept named EmoWri was created. The concept consists of a prototype with a wristband connected to a mobile application. Qualitative data was collected from user tests, interviews, and a questionnaire and was thematically analyzed. The results show that wearables can be used to trigger sensitive conversations between parents and their teenage children. The results show that seven design qualities were considered to be important: visibility, accessibility, flexibility, expressiveness, actability, motivating, and aesthetic. The main contribution of this study is starting a discussion about designing wearables as a tool that focuses on improving the users’ mental well-being.