HeartBees | Nature-inspired biofeedback tool
New forms of technology such as smartwatches, fully equipped with optical sensors, enable people to record, track, and share their heart rate. Recent research shows that sharing biosignals like our heart rate conveys our internal experiences, provides social cues about our emotional states and, potentially, makes us more aware and empathic of each other. As an example, consider the case of workplace in which the way individual workers feel can be monitored by watches, and be shared among a team, or even an entire organization in a privacy-preserving, pleasing, and playful way. Therefore, workplace biosignals’ sharing may not only strengthen coordination and empathy between a group of co-workers, but it might well increase productivity by better understanding each other’s emotional states.
HeartBees is a nature-inspired biofeedback visualization system. It makes use of physiological data obtained from smartwatches, and maps them into one of the eight basic emotions. The visualization is based on the Boids model, which is an approach to simulate the aggregate motion of a flock of birds, a school of fish, or a swarm of bees. In a similar vein, HeartBees simulates our collective emotional behavior, and it does so in a playful and privacy-preserving way. HeartBees has the potential to unlock a wide range of applications including the workplace. Such a system could be installed at the office, and would allow immediate feedback of its collective atmosphere.
HeartBees visualization: Launch demo
