Affective Health

Exposure to high stress levels for extended periods of time endangers health and may lead to states such as being ‘burnt out’ but also to physical diseases such as obesity, diabetes, or high blood pressure. Today stress related diseases are increasing world wide.

The Affective Health project explores mobile services that empowers people to monitor and understand their own stress levels vis-à-vis their everyday activities. By providing users with easy to grasp visualizations of data captured from body sensors bio-feedback loops are created. When mirrored back to the user, the relationship between activities in the world and how their bodies respond to them can help users to build meaningful relationships between their experiences and how that affects their bodies. This in turn empowers them to take control of and avoid stressful activities, increase activities that promote their well-being, or simply change their attitudes to certain aspects of their lives and thereby reducing its impact on their stress levels.

The project is funded by SSF (The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research) and the Mobile Life centre (http://www.mobile-life.org/).

Follow the evolution of Affective Health at http://affectivehealth.blogspot.com/ .