Tone - Wearable | Neha Kulkarni

Tone is a mobile application which helps users reduce stress with the help of music.

The state of emotional strain is called stress. There is no specific reason for stress, it can be caused by any reason like exams, break ups, work load, to worrying about your childern's future, and it comes uninvited.

So how to over come this stress? It is said that when you are stressed you should do things which interest you like yoga, meditation, gardening, cooking or socilaizing. Then why not choose music as source to reduce stress?

Music is universal. It is known to everyone, from pre born babies to a man who is 100 years old. Music has the power to alter our moods, emotions and perception of joy. Music heals stress and anxiety. It is medically proven that patients having several cognitive and heart problems are

reduced with the help of music therapy. The heart beats, blood flows, breathing and circulation of energy is improved with the help of music as the muscles and nerves are expanded and contracted in the effected area to regularize the blood flow making the person feel energetic.

There are several physical fitness wearable tech present in market, but to maintain that physical fitness regime the individual has to be psychologically fit too.

My product is Tone glove and Tone mobile application which will help users reduce stress with the help of music. The glove helps users track their live stress levels and moods and based on the readings will provide a mood based playlist to reduce stress and anxiety.

Features:

Homepage:

1. Select Mood.

2. Track my Mood.

3. Information on how to use Tone glove.

Select Mood page:

1. Drop down box to select mood.

a. Select from list oh moods.

2. Mood base playlist.

Track my Mood page:

1. Data Visualization showing live readings of heart rate and stress level.

2. Playlist based on mood track from tone glove.

3. Past readings of heart rate.

4. Past readings of stress level.

5. Information about working of the Tone glove and precautions to be taken.

Software:

1. Processing (programming)

2. Arduino (programming)

3. Photoshop (design)

4. Illustrator (design)

5. Keynote (prototype)

6. HTML/CSS(front end development)

7. php/mysql(backend)

8. Music API

Hardware:

1.Trinket

2. Pulse rate sensor

4. GSR ( Galvanic Skin Sensor )

5. Jumpers

6. Rubber, cotton cloth, Velcro for gloves

7. Cellphone.

8. USB cord

9. Computer to upload the code .

10. Earphones to listen to Music

User flow:

Wireframes and User Testing

After doing a indepth research I found out that there are two categories of people.

1. Those who need proof of everything.

2. Those that believe whatever they say is right.
The 1st category people will have freedom to select from list of moods and listen to those moods base songs to take pleasure and experience that mood. (?)
Considering the 2nd category people I thought of building a product which can help the track the stress level and mood.

I also categorised people into 2 different sections based on their interest:

1. People who like to listen to same mood base songs which they are experiencing - they said it lets them vent their unwanted emotions.

2. People who like to listen to contrasting mood based songs which they are experiencing - they said it distracts them from those unwanted emotions.

I created several wireframes from low fidelity to high fidelity based on the user tests I conducted on them. I had to to go back and forth to make changes to the design and functionality of the mobile app based on the feedback from the users. I have gave two options based on users feedback, to alllow users the freedom to "type in mood" or they can "track my mood" with the help of Tone gloves. Later I changed the name of "type in mood" to "click on mood" and changed the dropdown to select main moods. This is because users were getting confused and were typing any mood like clumpsy, hungry, crazy etc.

The reason behind keeping these two option was-

1. Users sometimes just want to listen to a specific mood based songs without actually experincing a particular mood at that time.

2. This app won’t be ristricted to the users having Tone glove.

Branding and designing:

The word TONE has several meaning. The Dictionary meaning of TONE in terms of sound means a musical or vocal sound with reference to its pitch, quality, and strength. It also means harmonize with something in terms of colour. TONE can also mean to give greater strength or firmness to the body or a part of it. Taking into consideration all the different meanings of TONE, the name is apt for my product.

TONE displays different colours which represent different emotions. Emotions are changed when we listen to different musical or vocal Tones. When we are able to balance the emotions running in our mind we are able keep our body Toned from within.

The logo is in the form of sound waves and the colour palette represent different emotions connected to the sound or music.

Data Visualization :

In the “Track my mood page” the data visualization shows live readings of the heart rate and stress level.

In “Click in mood” page I have created different icons representing different moods.

Keynote prototype:

The user has to create an account to use this app and keep privacy of his/her mood. After creating an account he will come across a page having two options:

1. Click in mood page-

Here you can type in the your mood, or any specific kind of mood base songs you want to list to

for example happy, angry, romantic, calm etc.

2.Track my mood page.-

Only users having a tone glove can use this options as to track the mood the tone gloves need to read the heart rate and electrical conductance of the skin to track the mood.

Hardware Challenges:

My intial concept was to design a wrist band but the pulse sensor which I used gets the readings from the capillary tissue which are found on the fingers and on the ears. The gsr sensor which measures the electrical conductances of the skin base on the sweat secreted due to strong emotions stimulated. Such sweating is prominent on the palm and the on the fingers. Because of such hardware constrains and bulky battery and electronic board I designed a hand glove.

Programming Challenges:

Not all the sensors support the web server, hence I had to connect the database with Processing to send the readings of the sensors into the database and display it with “get” and “echo” on the front end.

I had to convert Processing data visualization into Processing.js for the data visualization to run with sensor simultaneously on an HTML/CSS built app.

I callibarated my sensors taking reference from biofeedback Wikipedia. Then I categorized them into diferent levels showing different moods.

I found a music api (Musicovery) which has readymade mood base playlist. I used this link to differents levels of stress representing different moods.

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