**ClockViz: Designing Public Visualization for Coping with Collective Stress in Teamwork with Collective Stress in Teamwork**

**ClockViz: Designing Public Visualization for Coping** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71220

Mengru Xue, Rong-Hao Liang, Jun Hu and Loe Feijs

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Mengru Xue, Rong-Hao Liang, Jun Hu and

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71220

#### **Abstract**

Loe Feijs

The intervention solutions for coping with collective stress have been neglected in interaction design because of limited scalability of the physiological measuring methods. This paper focuses on exploring visual biofeedback design for collective stress in the context of teamwork. We design *ClockViz*, an augmented reality installation overlaid with static or dynamic projection to visualize three different extents of collective stress on a clock. Results of a 16-participant study show that *ClockViz* is useful to provide biofeedback data, change their internal status, and increase their mindfulness. Based on the results, we also discussed the potential solutions to collective stress sensing for designers to apply into their interactive design intervention.

**Keywords:** collective stress, biofeedback, visualization, design intervention, interaction design

### **1. Introduction**

People often experience stress in the workplaces. Stress normally comes from internal stressors such as working environment, daily issues, and life changes or the external stressors such as interpersonal relationship and society. The impact of stress can be either positive or negative. Thus, stress can be categorized into eustress and distress [1], respectively. Eustress normally gives people motivation to deal with challenging routines, produces higher performance, and generates positive feelings, which can give people a sense of achievement during work. However, researchers also have found some evidence that stress can lead to illness emotionally and physiologically. Overloaded prolonged stress leads to illness like anxiety, depression, anger, headache, insomnia, indigestion, or even worse. It lessens people's resistances to

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

diseases [2]. Helping people to adapt to the changing levels of stress is a significant challenge for interaction designers to promote healthier working and lifestyles.

Several techniques can be used as tools for designing applications of stress management. Sharma et al. demonstrated some common techniques that include analyzing physical signals such as eye gaze, pupil diameter, voice characteristic, and face movement and physiological signals such as electroencephalography (EEG), blood volume pressure (BVP), heart rate variability (HRV), galvanic skin response (GSR), electromyography (EMG), etc. [3]. With these input signals, the information can be further visualized as several forms of biofeedback [4] to raise the awareness and therefore help them deal with the stress. However, these physiological measuring methods seem to be hardly scalable because the deployment cost is directly proportional to the subjects wearing the devices. Due to the limited scalability of measurements, the designs of biofeedback mechanisms are limited to the stress sources from individuals, instead of the collective and organizational ones.

In this work, we aim to explore the visual biofeedback design of collective stress and to treat a group of people as an entity. Collective stress, as a certain type of stress, represents the stressful feelings of members in a particular organization [5]. Like individual stress, collective stress could be caused by external stressors such as natural catastrophes, economic crises, and political collapses. Moreover, collective stress may also be affected by some internal stressors like conflict or propagation between individuals. It could lead to less productivity, poor performance, strained relationship, or members' burnout. Providing suitable visual biofeedback design of collective stress help the workers dealing with the stress may increase the performances and lead healthier ways of teamworking.

**Figure 1.** ClockViz. (a) Illustrations of application scenario, (b) static visualization, and (c) dynamic visualization.

Therefore, we developed *ClockViz* (**Figure 1**), a projection-mapped clock to prove the concept. *ClockViz* visualizes collective stress information by visually augmenting to a clock that has been a public display in the working space, so workers in situ can easily perceive the collective stress information visually when they are working together. Regarding simplicity, we designed a static (**Figure 1b**) and a dynamic (**Figure 1c**) projection overlays to visualize three different extents of collective stress on a clock as an augmented reality installation. Initial user feedbacks were gathered from a sixteen-participant pilot testing, which was conducted to understand the effectiveness of the provided visualization under a pressure cooker. It showed that the participants not only agree that our system visualizes their mental states meaningfully but are also willing to provide constructive suggestions for the next iteration of customization.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First, we review the relevant literature. Then, we explain the design, the implementation, and the users' feedback obtained from a pilot study. Finally, future research directions are discussed and suggested with our conclusion.

### **2. Related work**

diseases [2]. Helping people to adapt to the changing levels of stress is a significant challenge

Proceedings of the Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement - Sense and Sensitivity, DeSForM

Several techniques can be used as tools for designing applications of stress management. Sharma et al. demonstrated some common techniques that include analyzing physical signals such as eye gaze, pupil diameter, voice characteristic, and face movement and physiological signals such as electroencephalography (EEG), blood volume pressure (BVP), heart rate variability (HRV), galvanic skin response (GSR), electromyography (EMG), etc. [3]. With these input signals, the information can be further visualized as several forms of biofeedback [4] to raise the awareness and therefore help them deal with the stress. However, these physiological measuring methods seem to be hardly scalable because the deployment cost is directly proportional to the subjects wearing the devices. Due to the limited scalability of measurements, the designs of biofeedback mechanisms are limited to the stress sources from individuals, instead of the collective and organiza-

In this work, we aim to explore the visual biofeedback design of collective stress and to treat a group of people as an entity. Collective stress, as a certain type of stress, represents the stressful feelings of members in a particular organization [5]. Like individual stress, collective stress could be caused by external stressors such as natural catastrophes, economic crises, and political collapses. Moreover, collective stress may also be affected by some internal stressors like conflict or propagation between individuals. It could lead to less productivity, poor performance, strained relationship, or members' burnout. Providing suitable visual biofeedback design of collective stress help the workers dealing with the stress may increase the perfor-

**Figure 1.** ClockViz. (a) Illustrations of application scenario, (b) static visualization, and (c) dynamic visualization.

for interaction designers to promote healthier working and lifestyles.

mances and lead healthier ways of teamworking.

tional ones.

2017

68

Individual stress coping strategies had been framed in the domain of interaction design. These designs mostly correlated to other domains, such as stress measurement and social science. Hence, this section will explain stress-related work in the following three sections: social factors on stress management, stress measurements, and related solutions in interaction design.

#### **2.1. Social factors of stress management**

In the domain of social science, many factors can cause stress in the context of a collective, for instance, the changing of organizational structure, leadership style, and quality; the demands of tasks and roles; the communication within an organization; and so on [6]. A majority of the previous studies on collective stress coping methods are sociological resolutions like training, rewarding, and self-developing [6], and they have also been explored extensively in catastrophic psychology [7]. However, it is infrequently approached in empirical stress research in the context of organizations [8].

#### **2.2. Stress measurement methods**

Other than physical and physiological techniques noted above, stress can also be measured through scales or questionnaires. Famous methodology to scale stress includes PANAS scale [9], perceived stress scale [10], Hassles scale [11], etc. Limited scalable methods of collective stress narrow down the interactive design solutions. Mark et al. use multi-methods that include heart rate monitors, computer logging, daily survey, general questionnaire, and interviews to measure college students' stress. She proposed that the amount of multitasking is positively associated with stress [12]. This research is one step further toward helping people change their behavior to reduce stress. In this case, collective stress information can be objectively measured which provide future researchers a way to gain collective data. Unfortunately, no possible solutions of collective stress were brought up at the end. Moreover, stress status

can be created and adjusted through complete difficult tasks or challenging games, such as memory card game [13], domino game [14], soccer game [15], and first-person shooter game [16], which validity and practicability have been proven in the previous research [17].

#### **2.3. Biofeedback for visual perception**

The combination of stress measurement and interaction design has been well explored. Some artifacts had been designed to give biofeedback of individual's stress status and attempt to visualize personal biological parameters [18, 19], or do interventions [20–22] to mediate their stress through various methodologies. For instance, Van Rooij et al. [18] applied RSP data in their work, and Henriques et al. [19] offered BVP parameters. Beyond the visualization level, Yu et al. designed an auditory display providing HRV to help biofeedback training [20]. Bhandari et al. [21] also applied music biofeedback intervention to help users regulate their stress. Gaggioli et al. [22] verified that inter-reality could better manage psychological stress than traditional stress management training. Some of these studies involved solutions considering visual, auditory, and tactile perceptions of a human being. Since visual perception has less interruption and disturbance, it has been widely applied in biofeedback visualization. Thus, we will mainly discuss biofeedback for visual perception in this case. Various patterns or physical objects associated with natural patterns had been used in former studies [4, 23]. A 3D graphic serious game design on smartphone provides biofeedback and adjusts user's breath through animation, which is related to the real-time cardiac coherence level [4]. In other words, letting people acknowledge their biomedical signals with certain training exercises could help them relax. MoodLight [23] is a real-time interactive lighting system, which designed to promote even to lead biofeedback to users. Matthew et al. claimed that "promoting or leading feedback can be more helpful to make user relax than the real-time feedback" [23]. Those studies verified that present biometric information to individuals could provide a sense of control and possibly regulate themselves on their own in specific scenarios.

#### **2.4. Summary**

Our review shows that the discipline of interaction research and design has taken a great interest in stress-related topics in recent years. It has been well explored of interaction design artifacts to mediate individual stress. Nonetheless, researchers mostly use technical solutions for stress measurements on individual users instead of a group of users as an entity. Interaction designers design artifacts to deal with social issues and neglect collective stress because of practical limitations. Hence, this research focuses on seeking practical solutions for collective stress management in teamwork.

### **3. Design**

#### **3.1. Design considerations**

According to the brief review, we assume that biofeedback visualization information of collective stress could help the team members better cope with their stress. The visualization should be "a tool that brings people together to address issues instead of isolates people as individuals" [24], based on the practical theory of social design. Thus, providing a public display is more preferable than using personal displays of individual users. Our research question is could public biofeedback visualization have meaningful influences on participants during teamwork?

can be created and adjusted through complete difficult tasks or challenging games, such as memory card game [13], domino game [14], soccer game [15], and first-person shooter game

Proceedings of the Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement - Sense and Sensitivity, DeSForM

The combination of stress measurement and interaction design has been well explored. Some artifacts had been designed to give biofeedback of individual's stress status and attempt to visualize personal biological parameters [18, 19], or do interventions [20–22] to mediate their stress through various methodologies. For instance, Van Rooij et al. [18] applied RSP data in their work, and Henriques et al. [19] offered BVP parameters. Beyond the visualization level, Yu et al. designed an auditory display providing HRV to help biofeedback training [20]. Bhandari et al. [21] also applied music biofeedback intervention to help users regulate their stress. Gaggioli et al. [22] verified that inter-reality could better manage psychological stress than traditional stress management training. Some of these studies involved solutions considering visual, auditory, and tactile perceptions of a human being. Since visual perception has less interruption and disturbance, it has been widely applied in biofeedback visualization. Thus, we will mainly discuss biofeedback for visual perception in this case. Various patterns or physical objects associated with natural patterns had been used in former studies [4, 23]. A 3D graphic serious game design on smartphone provides biofeedback and adjusts user's breath through animation, which is related to the real-time cardiac coherence level [4]. In other words, letting people acknowledge their biomedical signals with certain training exercises could help them relax. MoodLight [23] is a real-time interactive lighting system, which designed to promote even to lead biofeedback to users. Matthew et al. claimed that "promoting or leading feedback can be more helpful to make user relax than the real-time feedback" [23]. Those studies verified that present biometric information to individuals could provide a

[16], which validity and practicability have been proven in the previous research [17].

sense of control and possibly regulate themselves on their own in specific scenarios.

Our review shows that the discipline of interaction research and design has taken a great interest in stress-related topics in recent years. It has been well explored of interaction design artifacts to mediate individual stress. Nonetheless, researchers mostly use technical solutions for stress measurements on individual users instead of a group of users as an entity. Interaction designers design artifacts to deal with social issues and neglect collective stress because of practical limitations. Hence, this research focuses on seeking practical solutions for

According to the brief review, we assume that biofeedback visualization information of collective stress could help the team members better cope with their stress. The visualization should be "a tool that brings people together to address issues instead of isolates people as individuals" [24],

**2.3. Biofeedback for visual perception**

2017

70

**2.4. Summary**

**3. Design**

**3.1. Design considerations**

collective stress management in teamwork.

In the context of designing visualization of public display, three main considerations while forming the visualization design are the choice of expression, the correlations between collective stress status and corresponding expression, and the avoidance of interruption or distraction.

On the choice of expression, we try to change the environment as least as possible so that the workers can transfer their daily behaviors to the display we provide to them. By observing common working scenarios, we found out that most of the public working spaces have a clock on the wall, which is a public display of time, allowing us to design a nonintrusive installation by augmenting a clock. Regarding a clock as a display of time, time-related collective pressures are mostly suitable to be displayed on it. To further understand the correlations between collective stress status and corresponding expression, we conducted informal interviews with several student study groups in a university and summarize three common collective stress statuses in the teamwork with time:


On avoidance of interruption or distraction, the clock should stay ambient in the background, and the coworkers should notice the visualization only when they look at the clock for checking the time. Therefore, the visualization should avoid attention grabbers that may interfere with user's peripheral perception, such as salient movement, startle changes of colors, and intensities. Therefore, the visual augmentation should be designed either as static as possible or consists of consistent dynamic movements.

#### **3.2. Designing ambient visualization of collective stress**

Based on this principle, we proposed two proof-of-concept visualizations of collective stress: static and dynamic. Each expression contained three collective stress statuses that we discussed previously: (S1) everyone in the team feels stressed; (S2) someone(s) feel stressed, someone(s) do not; and (S0) everyone in the team does not feel stressed.

**Figure 2.** Static visualization. (a) Everyone in the team feels stressed. (b) Someone(s) feel stressed, someone(s) do not. (c) Everyone in the team does not feel stressed.

Static visualization (**Figure 2**) is an ambient intervention, which is inspired by Zen garden. The sand traces changed imperceptibly slowly within a glance, so it appears to be static. When everyone in the team feels stressed (**Figure 2a**), the entire clock is covered by dense patterns, showing the even pressure of every team member. When someone(s) feels stressed, but someone(s) does not (**Figure 2b**), the sand traces appear to be bipolar: half of the clock is covered by dense traces, but half of it is not. The ratio of the two parts also displays the uneven loadings of workers. When everyone in the team does not feel stressed (**Figure 2c**), the sand traces are slowly erased, so it appears to be peaceful. With these trace patterns of the sand, the design also attempts to evoke inner peace, calmness, and tranquility of people.

Dynamic visualization (**Figure 3**) is a dynamic intervention, which is inspired by water shows. The light pattern spins, dilates, and erodes in a stable speed, which is governed by several sine functions, to provide dynamic but peaceful representation when the users take a glance at the clock. When everyone in the team feels stressed (**Figure 3a**), a colorful spiral is displayed around the clock with dense, long traces, showing the even pressure of every team member. The length of trace changes with the time pressure. When someone(s) feels stressed, but someone(s) does not (**Figure 3b**), the density of spiral varies with time to display the uneven loadings of workers. The density of spiral also changes according to the unevenness of task loads. When everyone in the team does not feel stressed (**Figure 3c**), the length of trace reduced, so it appears like a peaceful, rotating color wheel. The design also attempts to use many positive metaphors such as the colors and shapes [25] to provide cheerful experiences.

**Figure 3.** Dynamic visualization. (a) Everyone in the team feels stressed. (b) Someone(s) feel stressed, someone(s) do not. (c) Everyone in the team does not feel stressed.
