Zenth : An Affective Technology for Stress Relief

Abstract: This master's thesis presents a research-through-design process that explores how can affective, context-aware systems support mental health and minimize stress in young adults during exam periods. This is achieved by designing an interactive system for stress recognition and relief. Biosensors embedded into existing wearable smart devices are used to infer stress-related mental states from a multimodal set of sensory data. The information is used to increase emotional awareness, provide recommendations for stress management, and enhance the users’ home environment. Two main challenges are addressed within this paper - detecting stress using easily available unobtrusive sensors and the output modalities supporting the human-computer interaction. Zenth has been developed through an iterative process, based on relevant literature and works in the field of affective computing, technology, and stress detection and recognition.