JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The global population is ageing, leading to shifts in healthcare needs. In addition to developing technology to support physical health, there is an increasing recognition that there is a need to consider how technology can support emotional health. This raises the question of how to design devices that older adults can interact with to log their emotions.

Objective:

We designed and developed two novel tangible devices, inspired by existing paper-based scales of emotions and report findings from a field trial of these devices with older adults.

Methods:

Use of interviews, field deployment, and fixed logging tasks, we assessed the developed devices.

Results:

Our results demonstrate that the tangible devices provided data comparable with standardised psychological scales of emotion. Our participants developed their own patterns of use around the devices, and their experience of using the devices uncovered a variety of design considerations. We discuss the difficulty of customising devices for specific user needs while logging data comparable to psychological scales of emotion, and highlight the value of reflecting on sparse emotional data.

Conclusions:

Our work demonstrates the potential for tangible emotional logging devices, and supports further work exploring whether such devices can support the emotional health of older adults through encouraging reflection of their emotional state.