Collaborative Research: EAGER: Systems for Assisting in Emotion Regulation in the Wild

情绪调节（ER）是工作场所和日常生活中必不可少的技能。管理情绪的类型、强度和持续时间的失败不仅会导致误解，还会对人、关系和组织造成伤害。急诊室的反复失败会导致精神健康障碍的发展，如焦虑或抑郁。通过临床医生主导的培训，可以成功地教授急诊技能，但这是一个持续的、劳动密集型的过程，目前成本高昂，而且不易扩大规模。这个项目遵循了另一个方向：它研究了基于可穿戴功能的系统设计中的基本问题，该系统使用技术在人们需要的时间和地点（在野外）为急诊室的人提供帮助。利用技术帮助人们在野外调节情绪是一个复杂的多学科问题：它需要理解心理学（为了理解情绪调节）、人机交互和人类在循环中的系统。在这个EAGER项目中，我们的首要目标是为这种理解建立一个基础，并将其应用到原型功能和系统中。我们将采用多学科方法。特别是，我们将：(1)为基于触觉呼吸起搏的野外ER支持开发设计指南。我们将与临床急诊医生协商制定这些指导方针，并将其应用于现有的急诊系统，如Apple Watch、Spire和EmotionCheck上的Breathe应用程序。(2)探索使用触觉让野外使用者参与呼吸干预，从而在实验室环境中产生有效的ER。(3)研究基于触觉的生物反馈干预在野外基于呼吸的ER中的应用。(4)探索在协助急诊室的过程中包括其他人（例如，临床医生、家庭成员、同事）的系统后果。该项目将促进对在野外提供急诊支持的系统开发的认识和理解，这对工作场所的生产力以及改善个人心理健康都有很大的潜在好处。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Emotion regulation (ER) is an essential skill in the workplace and everyday life. Failure to manage the type, intensity, and duration of emotions can result in not just misunderstandings, but also damage to people, relationships, and organizations. Repeated ER failures can lead to the development of mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression. ER skills can be successfully taught with clinician-led training, but this is an ongoing, labor-intensive process that is currently expensive and not easily scaled. This project follows another direction: it examines foundational issues in the design of systems, based around a wearable affordance, that use technology to assist a person in ER when and where the person needs it (in the wild).Using technology to assist people in regulating their emotions in the wild is a complex and multidisciplinary problem: it requires understanding in psychology (for understanding of emotion regulation), human computer interaction, and systems with humans in the loop. Our overarching goal in this EAGER project is to build a basis for such an understanding and applying it to a prototype affordance and system. We will use a multidisciplinary approach. In particular, we will: (1) Develop design guidelines for affordances supporting ER in the wild that are based on haptic breath pacing. We will develop these guidelines in consultation with clinical ER practitioners, and will apply them to existing ER systems, such as the Breathe app on the Apple Watch, Spire, and EmotionCheck. (2) Explore the use of haptics for involving in-the-wild users in a breathing intervention known to result in effective ER in laboratory settings. (3) Study the utility of haptic-based biofeedback interventions in breath-based ER in the wild. (4) Explore systems consequences of including others (for example, clinicians, family members, coworkers) in the process of assisting ER. This project will advance knowledge and understanding of the development of systems that provide ER support in the wild, with strong potential benefit for workplace productivity, as well as improved individual mental health.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.