University of Twente Student Theses
User interface design for breathing wearable
Naumilkat, Florian (2018) User interface design for breathing wearable.
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| Abstract: | ‘As easy as breathing’ is a saying that falsely implies breathing to be simple. Shallow breathing is a physical condition connected to stress, anxiety disorders, asthma, hyperventilation and pneumonia. Still is this condition not rare since it is unconsciously done by majority of people. A solution and a health alleviator for this is abdominal breathing. It was found to that abdominal breathing loweres blood pressure, heart rate, promotes clearer thinking, relieves stress, increases metabolism and supports detoxification in the body. Since abdominal breathing needs to be trained actively the breathing wearable ‘Airleviate’ has been developed. The purpose of ‘Airleviate’ is to supply users with feedback about their breathing so that they are supported in their training to turn abdominal breathing into a habit. In order to give feedback is ‘Airleviate’ using respiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP) to measure breathing and machine learning algorithms to analyze the measurements. This purpose of this graduation project was giving ‘Airleviate’ and interface for the user to interact with and show the feedback in an appropriate way. The to be answered research question is: ‘How should the GUI of a breathing wearable be designed giving visual feedback to optimize breathing patterns and guide to habit formation of healthy breathing?’ It was found that RIP is the best non-invasive measuring technique, habit formation can be supported by goal setting and biofeedback is very useful in terms of abdominal breathing. A market research found that there are a lot of apps and devices offered but no comparable one is developed yet. Using this knowledge a first mock-up of a mobile phone application was developed, which contained several different data visualizations. This mock-up was reviewed by two different user experience experts. The reviewed concept was followed by developing a working prototype with Dart, so that the code can be compiled for Android and iOS. The result is shown in Appendix K. Briefly described does the user set a goal with the app, can see a flower representation of how well he is doing towards the goal, can see in depth data on timing, breathing frequency and periods and can compare measurements in terms of goals and timings of abdominal breathing. This prototype was then tested by 5 pairs of users to encourage the communicativeness between the subjects. Results from these tests were obtained via filming, observations during testing and a survey filled in by the users at the end. The results showed that the app was generally understood well, intuitive and enabling reflection on breathing. Weak points were that explanations were partially distracting, too long or ignored by users. The conclusion of this was that the research question is answered by the app supporting abdominal breathing, being mobile and simple, implementing goal setting and tracking and minimizing cognitive workload, giving several graphs and supplying clear explanations. Recommendations given for future work are mainly realizing a real time connection between RIP belts, classification and GUI. Furthermore should the classification and GUI be fused into one program. Having these two given a real time analysis and feedback should be implemented into the system. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 01 general works, 02 science and culture in general, 05 communication studies, 06 documentary information, 20 art studies, 21 art forms |
| Programme: | Creative Technology BSc (50447) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/75896 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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