What to Put on the User: Sensing Technologies for Studies and Physiology Aware Systems

Fitness trackers not just provide easy means to acquire physiological data in real-world environments due to affordable sensing technologies, they further offer opportunities for physiology-aware applications and studies in HCI; however, their performance is not well understood. In this paper, we report findings on the quality of 3 sensing technologies: PPG-based wrist trackers (Apple Watch, Microsoft Band 2), an ECG-belt (Polar H7) and reference device with stick-on ECG electrodes (Nexus 10). We collected physiological (heart rate, electrodermal activity, skin temperature) and subjective data from 21 participants performing combinations of physical activity and stressful tasks. Our empirical research indicates that wrist devices provide a good sensing performance in stationary settings. However, they lack accuracy when participants are mobile or if tasks require physical activity. Based on our findings, we suggest a textitDesign Space for Wearables in Research Settings and reflected on the appropriateness of the investigated technologies in research contexts.

[1]  J. Russell.  A circumplex model of affect. , 1980 .

[2]  Martin L. Griss,et al.  Activity-Aware Mental Stress Detection Using Physiological Sensors , 2010, MobiCASE.

[3]  N. Schneiderman,et al.  Stress and health: psychological, behavioral, and biological determinants. , 2005, Annual review of clinical psychology.

[4]  T. Fitzpatrick.  The validity and practicality of sun-reactive skin types I through VI. , 1988, Archives of dermatology.

[5]  Francine Gemperle,et al.  Effects of functionality on perceived comfort of wearables , 2003, Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, 2003. Proceedings..

[6]  Oscar Mayora-Ibarra,et al.  Smartphone app usage as a predictor of perceived stress levels at workplace , 2015, 2015 9th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth).

[7]  U. Wisløff,et al.  Accuracy of Heart Rate Watches: Implications for Weight Management , 2016, PloS one.

[8]  A. Grob,et al.  Dimensional models of core affect: a quantitative comparison by means of structural equation modeling , 2000 .

[9]  Jennifer Healey,et al.  Detecting stress during real-world driving tasks using physiological sensors , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[10]  Christoph Weinert.  Coping with the Dark Side of IT Usage: Mitigating the Effect of Technostress , 2016, CPR.

[11]  John Allen.  Photoplethysmography and its application in clinical physiological measurement , 2007, Physiological measurement.

[12]  Hyun-Sung An,et al.  How accurate are the wrist-based heart rate monitors during walking and running activities? Are they accurate enough? , 2016, BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine.

[13]  M. Dawson,et al.  The electrodermal system , 2007 .

[14]  Masashi Yasuda,et al.  Development of a skin temperature measuring system for non-contact stress evaluation , 1998, Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Vol.20 Biomedical Engineering Towards the Year 2000 and Beyond (Cat. No.98CH36286).

[15]  G. Ben-Shakhar,et al.  Standardization within individuals: a simple method to neutralize individual differences in skin conductance. , 1985, Psychophysiology.

[16]  R. Weitkunat,et al.  Assessment of Cigarette Smoking in Epidemiologic Studies , 2013 .

[17]  Andrew T. Campbell,et al.  BeWell+: multi-dimensional wellbeing monitoring with community-guided user feedback and energy optimization , 2012, Wireless Health.

[18]  L M BAKER,et al.  The relationship under stress between changes in skin temperature, electrical skin resistance, and pulse rate. , 1954, Journal of experimental psychology.

[19]  Richard J. Davidson,et al.  Brain, body, and cognition: Neural, physiological and self-report correlates of phobic and normative fear , 2014, Biological Psychology.

[20]  Daniel McDuff,et al.  COGCAM: Contact-free Measurement of Cognitive Stress During Computer Tasks with a Digital Camera , 2016, CHI.

[21]  Elke Vlemincx,et al.  A sigh following sustained attention and mental stress: Effects on respiratory variability , 2012, Physiology & Behavior.

[22]  H. Critchley,et al.  Brain systems for baroreflex suppression during stress in humans , 2012, Human brain mapping.

[23]  Yunxin Liu,et al.  MoodScope: building a mood sensor from smartphone usage patterns , 2013, MobiSys.

[24]  Zhiwei Zhu,et al.  A Real-Time Human Stress Monitoring System Using Dynamic Bayesian Network , 2005, 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) - Workshops.

[25]  Jennifer Healey,et al.  Affective wearables , 1997, Digest of Papers. First International Symposium on Wearable Computers.

[26]  Michael Beigl,et al.  A wearable system for mood assessment considering smartphone features and data from mobile ECGs , 2016, UbiComp Adjunct.

[27]  Jonathan Klein,et al.  Frustrating the user on purpose: a step toward building an affective computer , 2002, Interact. Comput..

[28]  M Adjouadi,et al.  A real-time assistive computer interface for users with motor disabilities , 1999, SIGC.

[29]  Toshiyo Tamura,et al.  Wearable Photoplethysmographic Sensors—Past and Present , 2014 .

[30]  T. G. Brown,et al.  The Effect of Vocalization on the Heart Rate Response to Mental Arithmetic , 1997, Physiology & Behavior.

[31]  J. Gorman,et al.  Effect of mental stress throughout the day on cardiac autonomic control , 1994, Biological Psychology.

[32]  T. Kamarck,et al.  A global measure of perceived stress. , 1983, Journal of health and social behavior.

[33]  Alex Pentland,et al.  Daily Stress Recognition from Mobile Phone Data, Weather Conditions and Individual Traits , 2014, ACM Multimedia.

[34]  J. Tomaka,et al.  Effects of vocalization on cardiovascular and electrodermal responses during mental arithmetic. , 1994, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[35]  M. Bradley,et al.  Measuring emotion: the Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential. , 1994, Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry.

[36]  Joris C Verster,et al.  The effect of stress on core and peripheral body temperature in humans , 2013, Stress.

[37]  O. Wolf,et al.  Hyper-responsiveness to acute stress, emotional problems and poorer memory in former preterm children , 2014, Stress.

[38]  Armando Barreto,et al.  Non-intrusive Physiological Monitoring for Automated Stress Detection in Human-Computer Interaction , 2007, ICCV-HCI.

[39]  N. Selvaraj,et al.  Assessment of heart rate variability derived from finger-tip photoplethysmography as compared to electrocardiography , 2008, Journal of medical engineering & technology.

[40]  C. Witvliet,et al.  Play it again Sam: Repeated exposure to emotionally evocative music polarises liking and smiling responses, and influences other affective reports, facial EMG, and heart rate , 2007 .

[41]  Irving Biederman,et al.  Mental set and mental arithmetic , 1973, Memory & cognition.

[42]  Ifeyinwa E. Achumba,et al.  Monitoring: Taxonomy of Issues, Techniques, Applications, Challenges and Limitations , 2013 .

[43]  Jon D. Morris.  Observations: SAM: The Self-Assessment Manikin An Efficient Cross-Cultural Measurement Of Emotional Response 1 , 1995 .

[44]  Ellen Yi-Luen Do,et al.  Don't mind me touching my wrist: a case study of interacting with on-body technology in public , 2013, ISWC '13.

[45]  Martin Donoval,et al.  Wearable healthcare electronics for 24-7 monitoring with focus on user comfort , 2016, 2016 26th International Conference Radioelektronika (RADIOELEKTRONIKA).

[46]  J. Evans.  Straightforward Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences , 1995 .

[47]  B. Dolezal,et al.  Validation of Biofeedback Wearables for Photoplethysmographic Heart Rate Tracking. , 2016, Journal of sports science & medicine.

[48]  J. Chan,et al.  Diagnostic performance and cost of CT angiography versus stress ECG--a randomized prospective study of suspected acute coronary syndrome chest pain in the emergency department (CT-COMPARE). , 2014, International journal of cardiology.

[49]  Mohamed Ismail Nounou,et al.  Are Currently Available Wearable Devices for Activity Tracking and Heart Rate Monitoring Accurate, Precise, and Medically Beneficial? , 2015, Healthcare informatics research.

[50]  W. Linden.  What do arithmetic stress tests measure? Protocol variations and cardiovascular responses. , 1991, Psychophysiology.

[51]  J. Vagedes,et al.  How accurate is pulse rate variability as an estimate of heart rate variability? A review on studies comparing photoplethysmographic technology with an electrocardiogram. , 2013, International journal of cardiology.

[52]  Jakub Parák,et al.  Evaluation of wearable consumer heart rate monitors based on photopletysmography , 2014, 2014 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[53]  M. Riediger,et al.  Outside of the laboratory: Associations of working-memory performance with psychological and physiological arousal vary with age. , 2014, Psychology and aging.

[54]  R. Zatorre,et al.  The Rewarding Aspects of Music Listening Are Related to Degree of Emotional Arousal , 2009, PloS one.

[55]  Zohn Rosen,et al.  Validation of photoplethysmography as a method to detect heart rate during rest and exercise , 2015, Journal of medical engineering & technology.

[56]  R. Thayer.  The biopsychology of mood and arousal , 1989 .

[57]  Misha Pavel,et al.  Evaluation of the accuracy and reliability for photoplethysmography based heart rate and beat-to-beat detection during daily activities , 2017 .

[58]  Gerhard Tröster,et al.  Discriminating Stress From Cognitive Load Using a Wearable EDA Device , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[59]  Javier Hernandez,et al.  Call Center Stress Recognition with Person-Specific Models , 2011, ACII.

[60]  Nicholas Chen,et al.  Probing calmness in applications using a calm display prototype , 2017, UbiComp/ISWC Adjunct.

[61]  Michelle G. Newman,et al.  Heart rate and autonomic response to stress after experimental induction of worry versus relaxation in healthy, high-worry, and generalized anxiety disorder individuals , 2013, Biological Psychology.

[62]  Leiv Sandvik,et al.  Long-Term Stability of Cardiovascular and Catecholamine Responses to Stress Tests: An 18-Year Follow-Up Study , 2010, Hypertension.

[63]  Hoda Javadikasgari,et al.  Variable Accuracy of Wearable Heart Rate Monitors during Aerobic Exercise , 2017, Medicine and science in sports and exercise.

[64]  A. Finset,et al.  Heart rate and skin conductance reactivity to brief psychological stress in brain-injured patients. , 1998, Journal of psychosomatic research.

[65]  T. Hastie,et al.  Accuracy in Wrist-Worn, Sensor-Based Measurements of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure in a Diverse Cohort , 2016, bioRxiv.

[66]  A. Kramer,et al.  Physiological metrics of mental workload: A review of recent progress , 1990, Multiple-task performance.

[67]  R. Furberg,et al.  Systematic review of the validity and reliability of consumer-wearable activity trackers , 2015, International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

[68]  B. Jansson,et al.  Skin conductance responses as predictor of emotional responses to stressful life events. , 2007, Behaviour research and therapy.

[69]  Wan-Hua Lin,et al.  Comparison of Heart Rate Variability from PPG with That from ECG , 2014 .

[70]  W. Thompson,et al.  A Comparison of Acoustic Cues in Music and Speech for Three Dimensions of Affect , 2006 .