Design for Caring : Stress & Anxiety Caring for ourselves and for others. A look into stress and anxiety and the role technology plays. Neasa Carroll & Kruthi Kiran MSc/MA Interaction & Experience Design
WHAT WILL WE BE COVERING? ➤ Social Anxiety ➤ Technology as a stressor ➤ Social Media Pressure ➤ Technology to De-stress ➤ Insomnia ➤ ASMR ➤ Technostress ➤ Work place stress ➤ Activities
“ Design for Care is developing new solutions for care in the 21st century, focusing on practical, 'can-do' results, which can be shared widely.” -Lord Rogers of Riverside
The role of Care Care involves acknowledging the transforming character of the social ➤ and material environment and our capabilities to act as part of it by cultivating sensitivity to ‘the attachments that support people.’ (Imrie et al., 2016) Care asks for skills and sensibilities that attune people to the fragile ➤ relations making up daily settings and enable them to judge the qualities of those relations so that they can be appropriately supported. (Imrie et al., 2016) Four Ethical Elements of Care: Attentiveness, Responsibility, ➤ Competence and Responsiveness. Not intended as moral principles, but as potential skills and sensibilities that might be conducive to good care. (Imrie et al., 2016)
The role of Technology The discovery and development of medications, art forms, transportation, electronics, communications, treatments to improve mental, physical and emotional health are indicators of the evolution and importance of technology as a tool for progress. (Wadhwa, 2017) This offers a paradox: Technology can be regarded as something that offers stress management while also being a stressor. (Wadhwa, 2017)
Instagram,2019 Technology as a stressor In recent years we as a society have become more aware of the negative impact technology can have on a persons life. Facetune 2,2016 Now more than ever younger generations are developing anxiety disorders fuelled by the presence of social media, picture editing apps and group chats. VSCO,2016 WhatsApp,2019
Social Media: A Stressor Social Media is constant, even with notifications silenced. It is anxiety inducing and can lead to a heightened awareness of one’s appearance and body. There is a connection between the idea of ‘likes’, comments and messages, and a person’s value or worth.
“ Social media reaches farther than we can physically reach with advertising -Tony Clark
Technology to De-stress ➤ Technology has also become a tool that helps people suffering with a multitude of mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, insomnia etc. ➤ Using technology as a tool for caring allows people to acknowledge that this is something in their life that they are not alone in coping with. ➤ The development of apps such as Headspace, Calm along with the creation of devices such as the Muse headset, Dr. Lowenstein’s Stress Thermometer and more allows the user to practice self care no matter their location.
“I have meditated for years. However, it was when I started doing it with emWave2 it really became more fun. I can actually view and confirm my presence, my awareness and my heart coherence in a visible, documented way. I can experiment and watch what happens....I just love it <3” “ … uses a pulse sensor to track your heartbeat and helps you relax and slow that beat. With practice, users learn to slow their hearts and reach a relaxed and happier state, and the device comes with heart-slowing "games" you can play and you can use emWave2 while performing other tasks.” (Zetlin, 2016) Case Study: emWave2
Case Study: emWave2
Anxiety and Insomnia ➤ What Came First? Anxiety causes sleeping problems, and new research suggests sleep deprivation can cause an anxiety disorder. Research also shows that some form of sleep disruption is present in nearly all psychiatric disorders. Studies also show that people with chronic insomnia are at high risk of developing an anxiety disorder. Research also shows that some form of sleep disruption is present in nearly all psychiatric disorders. Studies also show that people with chronic insomnia are at high risk of developing an anxiety disorder.
“ ….to value care we have to recognize the inevitable interdependency essential to the reliant and vulnerable beings that we are.” -María Puig de la Bellacasa
Case Study: Dodow ➤ Dodow is a metronome with a light system that reteaches you how to fall asleep naturally, without taking any medicine ➤ can last either 8 or 20 minutes and then Dodow switches itself off.
Case Study: Dodow By synchronizing your (abdominal) breathing with the pulsing light, Dodow progressively takes your breathing down from 11 to 6 breaths per minute. The rate of 6 BPM is also used in what is called cardiac coherence exercises. According to several studies, the rhythm is the rate that maximizes stimulation of the baroreflex - a reflex whose role is to balance the autonomic nervous system when it’s unbalanced.
Case Study: Sleep by Headspace ➤ If you are not in the financial position to pay for aids such as Dodow an alternative solution is meditation to aid your insomnia. Headspace developed Sleep by Headspace to do so. ➤ Headspace is a meditation app developed in order to help the user to relax by concentrated, meditation breathing techniques to be carried out for certain periods of time, e.g 10 minutes, at a go. ➤ Through internal research and user feedback they recognised that many users were using the app as a sleep aid in order to help them fall asleep.
Case Study: Sleep by Headspace ➤ Sleep by Headspace was the first insomnia aimed app that acknowledged that technology was also one of the causes of sleep disruption. ➤ We spend much of our day now looking at screens or interacting with technology in some form or other that this feeds into our mental inability to shut off and relax.
Case Study: Sleep by Headspace “Headspace exists to improve the health and happiness of the world. But it’s hard to be healthy, let alone happy, if you haven’t slept properly. While regular meditation has been shown to help with sleep health, we knew that people were also looking for something they could use in bed. So we designed a whole new experience, called Sleep by Headspace, to help create the perfect conditions for healthy, restful sleep”
ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) ➤ ASMR allows individuals to score higher on MAAS-mindful attention awareness scale (global measure of mindfulness) ➤ ASMR is a way of allowing users to feel a tingling sensation from the back of their heads all the way down to their spine. It’s a way of relaxing and is said to help with anxiety, insomnia and depression. ➤ Not everybody has ASMR ➤ You know how you google symptoms and learn that you’re dying? (and everybody tells you not to do that again)
How is it supposed to work?
ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) Visual Triggers
ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) Auditory Triggers
Bob Ross - Audio and Visual triggers
Technostress ➤ Technostress is the negative psychological link between people and the introduction of new technologies. ➤ People experience technostress when they cannot adapt to or cope with information technologies in a healthy manner. ➤ They feel compelled to work faster because information flows faster, and have little time to spend on sustained thinking and creative analysis.
Technostress
What is Technostress
Technostress in college and schools ➤ 40% of college students in Ireland have severe anxiety or severe depression and technostress factors in. ➤ Students are unable to manage the supply of information. ➤ We all are afraid that change is going to take place and somehow we’re going to be left behind. ➤ Students are expected to “explore” and “play around” with softwares and websites and that would have been easy and fun to do, but that’s what’s expected for every module which can be a little stressful.
Sulis Would've been easier if it said modules
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