Wearable devices of today help people track and monitor their biometric data such as heart rate. While the tracked data can help inform people of their health, many find that it adds unnecessary anxieties in the way the feedback is provided. In the case of college students, they spend most of their time in a stressful environment, leading them to an increase in the risk of mental health issues. To help with this issue, we present Heart Waves, an experimental ambient feedback system that tracks heart rate and uses water sound to provide feedback in a stressful work environment. Heart Waves uses the sound of falling water to create a relaxing atmosphere to help ease any stress they are going through. As the user's heart rate goes up, the flow of water increases, and as their heart rate goes down, the flow rate of water decreases. The purpose of this project is to automatize the processing of heart rate data so that the user does not have to analyze the data and create an ambient feedback system that adjusts to their heart rate.
Heart Waves: A Heart Rate Feedback System Using Water Sound
This project focuses on building a negative feedback system that processes the heart rate data
that is captured from the users and uses water sound to create a relaxing environment to comfort
the users and lower their heart rate until it returns to its normal values. A negative feedback
system is a system where some function of the output of a system is fed back into the system in a
manner that tends to reduce the variations in the output. This can be through changes in the input
or by other disturbances. A negative feedback system consists of four stages. Here is the breakdown:
that is captured from the users and uses water sound to create a relaxing environment to comfort
the users and lower their heart rate until it returns to its normal values. A negative feedback
system is a system where some function of the output of a system is fed back into the system in a
manner that tends to reduce the variations in the output. This can be through changes in the input
or by other disturbances. A negative feedback system consists of four stages. Here is the breakdown:
One challenge in designing this negative feedback system was to make sure the effector did not lead
to more anxiety for the user. The system should not be a display of the data, but a mechanism that
supports the user without giving them any raw data. The system does not use any other encouraging
mechanism as that would increase the amount of data that can be read from the system. The user
should not be able to understand what the user's heart rate is by looking at the system. Compare to other sound sources, water sound is a good option as studies have shown that nature
sound helps people relax. Nature sounds also do not distract the user from performing their
other tasks, where, for example, playing music can distract users from performing their other tasks. The designed system consists of two devices. The first is a water fountain pump that changes flow
based on the user's heart rate. Currently, the system uses standard values for the heart rate data
(60-80 bpm), but the goal is to modify this so that the system could use a user-dependent model.
The second is a wearable device that we developed that gathers heart rate and sends it to the pump.
to more anxiety for the user. The system should not be a display of the data, but a mechanism that
supports the user without giving them any raw data. The system does not use any other encouraging
mechanism as that would increase the amount of data that can be read from the system. The user
should not be able to understand what the user's heart rate is by looking at the system. Compare to other sound sources, water sound is a good option as studies have shown that nature
sound helps people relax. Nature sounds also do not distract the user from performing their
other tasks, where, for example, playing music can distract users from performing their other tasks. The designed system consists of two devices. The first is a water fountain pump that changes flow
based on the user's heart rate. Currently, the system uses standard values for the heart rate data
(60-80 bpm), but the goal is to modify this so that the system could use a user-dependent model.
The second is a wearable device that we developed that gathers heart rate and sends it to the pump.
This work was published at the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TUI2020). If you are interested in learning more about this project, make sure you have a look at the publication: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3374920.3374982
