ZENse - supporting everyday emotional reflection

Abstract

Healthcare benefited greatly from the trend of self-quantification. However, emotional states and psychological health are more elusive and defy description by simple sensor data. In this paper we show how a user oriented design process resulted in ZENse, a wearable prototype for digitally supporting ideas of Positive Psychology, a psychological approach to help patients with mental disorders. A conducted user study shows promising results on the idea and the design. Despite it being only a small explorative study with healthy participants, we found that the prototype triggers situations and interactions that are known to have a beneficial effect on mental well-being.