BoostMeUp: Improving Cognitive Performance in the Moment by Unobtrusively Regulating Emotions with a Smartwatch

A person's emotional state can strongly influence their ability to achieve optimal task performance. Aiming to help individuals manage their feelings, different emotion regulation technologies have been proposed. However, despite the well-known influence that emotions have on task performance, no study to date has shown if an emotion regulation technology can also enhance user's cognitive performance in the moment. In this paper, we present BoostMeUp, a smartwatch intervention designed to improve user's cognitive performance by regulating their emotions unobtrusively. Based on studies that show that people tend to associate external signals that resemble heart rates as their own, the intervention provides personalized haptic feedback simulating a different heart rate. Users can focus on their tasks and the intervention acts upon them in parallel, without requiring any additional action. The intervention was evaluated in an experiment with 72 participants, in which they had to do math tests under high pressure. Participants who were exposed to slow haptic feedback during the tests decreased their anxiety, increased their heart rate variability and performed better in the math tests, while fast haptic feedback led to the opposite effects. These results indicate that the BoostMeUp intervention can lead to positive cognitive, physiological and behavioral changes.