TY - JOUR
T1 - In-Situ exploration of emotion regulation via smart clothing
T2 - an empirical study of healthcare workers in their work environment
AU - Jiang, Mengqi
AU - Nanjappan, Vijayakumar
AU - Liang, Hai Ning
AU - ten Bhömer, Martijn
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Healthcare personnel suffer from an increased risk of stress, burnout, and depression due to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies show that interactive smart textiles help people alleviate their emotions. In this research, we investigate how to utilise interactive textiles to help healthcare workers mitigate their negative feelings. We have designed a smart t-shirt that encourages its wearers to perform body movements to enhance their positive emotions, stimulated by vibrotactile and audio feedback mechanisms. We demonstrate our smart t-shirt’s utility by asking healthcare workers (including physicians and nurses) to use it for five consecutive days. Our prototype design supports using it anywhere, including work, home, and other places. We evaluated our smart t-shirt prototype for emotion regulations at work for healthcare workers through an in-situ user study conducted at three hospitals. Results show that using the smart t-shirt positively impacts the healthcare workers’ immediate emotion regulation when they experienced emotion fluctuation and provided a more positive attitude towards their work. We conclude by analysing the potential factors that influence emotions and outline the design space of e-textiles for emotion regulation in real-life use.
AB - Healthcare personnel suffer from an increased risk of stress, burnout, and depression due to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies show that interactive smart textiles help people alleviate their emotions. In this research, we investigate how to utilise interactive textiles to help healthcare workers mitigate their negative feelings. We have designed a smart t-shirt that encourages its wearers to perform body movements to enhance their positive emotions, stimulated by vibrotactile and audio feedback mechanisms. We demonstrate our smart t-shirt’s utility by asking healthcare workers (including physicians and nurses) to use it for five consecutive days. Our prototype design supports using it anywhere, including work, home, and other places. We evaluated our smart t-shirt prototype for emotion regulations at work for healthcare workers through an in-situ user study conducted at three hospitals. Results show that using the smart t-shirt positively impacts the healthcare workers’ immediate emotion regulation when they experienced emotion fluctuation and provided a more positive attitude towards their work. We conclude by analysing the potential factors that influence emotions and outline the design space of e-textiles for emotion regulation in real-life use.
KW - E-textile
KW - Interactive textile
KW - emotion regulation
KW - healthcare workers
KW - in-situ research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114832119&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/0144929X.2021.1975821
DO - 10.1080/0144929X.2021.1975821
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85114832119
SN - 0144-929X
VL - 43
SP - 419
EP - 432
JO - Behaviour and Information Technology
JF - Behaviour and Information Technology
IS - 3
ER -