How are you feeling? using tangibles to log the emotions of older adults

Gooch, Daniel and Mehta, Vikram and Price, Blaine and McCormick, Ciaran and Bandara, Arosha and Bennaceur, Amel and Bennasar, Mohamed and Stuart, Avelie and Clare, Linda and Levine, Mark and Cohen, Jessica and Nuseibeh, Bashar (2020) How are you feeling? using tangibles to log the emotions of older adults. In: TEI 2020 - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction :. TEI 2020 - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction . Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, AUS, pp. 31-43. ISBN 9781450361071

Abstract

The global population is ageing, leading to shifts in healthcare needs. Home healthcare monitoring systems currently focus on physical health, but there is an increasing recognition that psychological wellbeing also needs support. This raises the question of how to design devices that older adults can interact with to log their feelings. We designed three tangible prototypes, based on existing paper-based scales of affect. We report findings from a lab study in which participants used the prototypes to log the emotion from standardised emotional vignettes. We found that the prototypes allowed participants to accurately record identified emotions in a reasonable time. Our participants expressed a perceived need to record emotions, either to share with family/carers or for self-reflection. We conclude that our work demonstrates.