for 7 days i ran a pilot to see if i could simply encourage people to smile using texting and reap the benefits–here are the results

1. text2calm
reducing stress via MMS
sean rose
spring 2011
twitter: @sean_a_rose

2. Goals
• Identify a simple stress relieving
behavior
• Show that people can reduce stress
using their mobile phones with that
behavior

3. Design
• Chose smiling as the simple,
stress relieving behavior
• Requires minimal time, effort
and is a proven stress
reducer1
• Participants needed to have
cameraphones in order to
participate
• For 7 days, they would be sent…
[1] http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2009/143853.pdf

4. Design
…this
and were instructed to respond…

5. Design
…with this

6. Design
• Created simple signup forms
• Used primarily GChat and
Facebook to spread the form
• Wanted to sign up 5-10 people
for the pilot
• Had 8 commit at the beginning
of the pilot
• 1 participant stopped at the first
day

7. Results
• 7 of 8 who originally committed stayed
on for the full length of the pilot
• 4 of those 7 participated exactly as
instructed for the week, responding
with a picture of themselves smiling

8. Insights
Effects Convenience
• All participants reported feeling • All of the participants had
better from the exercise in smartphones, but said that they
some way or another preferred using MMS to an app
• Quicker
• Half reported feeling happier by • Simpler
smiling themselves, but the • Paid more attention to it
other half reported feeling
happier from receiving the initial • Participants sometimes were in
smiling picture situations that they could not
take pictures of themselves in,
Context and either
• All of the participants were • replied with text in lieu of
individuals I had ongoing text photo
conversations with outside of • replied with an older photo
the pilot • replied later

9. Surprises
Trust/Comfort Enthusiasm
• The one participant that • Those who participated were
dropped said they felt weird generally very prompt in
sending pictures of themselves responding and appeared to be
• The ones that remained said genuinely happy
that it wouldn’t be the same if
the pictures were of random Difficulty
people smiling • Manually sending the MMS’s was
somewhat tedious; an
automated option would be
Pre/Post Opinion more desirable
• Most of the participants thought
the idea was silly in the
beginning; realized the benefit
throughout and afterward