Fighting panic with haptics!

Abstract

This paper presents some of the findings from the master’s thesis project Fighting Panic with Haptics! (Gustafsson and Yxhage 2016) which aimed to answer the question of if and how one could make a product to help people suffering from panic attacks and panic disorder. Through the use of design and human factors tools such as personas, user journeys and user testing we came to the conclusion that it is possible to create a physical product that can help against panic attacks. Furthermore, our findings suggest that such a product should be designed to help the persons suffering from panic attacks break their internal focus by including the world around them since internal focus on thoughts and bodily reactions was found to be one of the core triggers of the attacks. Moreover, we could conclude that design theories and methodologies are effective tools also when trying to solve complex problems outside of the conventional product design sphere.