Stress is an important determinant of overall health. Without the right interventions and stress management, stress can trigger disease and severe physical and mental health issues.

InnerInsight is an Android mobile phone application that helps the user explore different perspectives on one's stress and emotions through unique data visualizations and information displays. My goal is to help the user improve awareness and understanding of the health impacts of stress, the context surrounding and causing one's stress, and ultimately benefit from health interventions enhanced by these perspectives.

The visualizations and what they show:

1. Stress Scales – Quantitative data from wearables such as heart rate information and skin conductance which change with stress. For example, sudden stressors can trigger increase in the skin's electrical conductance.

2. Ebbs and Flows – The dynamics of moment to moment physiological changes using an abstract visual aesthetic and motion graphics driven by physiological sensor data.

3. EventVis – Contextual data such as activities from one's calendar events and how it relates to stress level.

4. FigureVis – How different emotions manifest as distinct patterns of bodily sensations felt on different areas of the body similar in style to thermal imaging.

5. Emotion Graph – Intensity and positivity/negativity of emotions visualized to give a big picture view of emotional changes and trajectories over time.

Their was significant interest (175 responses within a few days) by the general public to the study ad for InnerInsight posted on Craigslist. 23 users (aged 18 to 69, 17 female, 6 male) completed the remote moderated usability study. Users perceived the visualizations as useful to informing and improving their personal approaches to managing stress. Users said that they could see themselves using this app frequently such as using the stress events visualization to inform changes to their lifestyle.

This work is part of my broader doctoral research exploring the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of stress. These include using sensor fusion to improve stress data quality, personalization in health informatics, improving usability studies, just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAI), and developing a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of stress and wellness.

Read more about InnerInsight here (PhD Dissertation)