HeartChat: Heart Rate Augmented Mobile Chat to Support Empathy and Awareness
summary
Built an Android chat that links a Polar BLE chest strap to messages and logs heart rate per message, real‑time at the top, or sent explicitly via a button. Two‑week in‑the‑wild study with 14 participants (7 pairs), >4,000 messages, 69 active user‑days, and seven hours of interviews finds physiological cues increase empathy and context awareness, let partners infer activity or stress, and spark curiosity; heart bubbles, heart light, heart button show tradeoffs of fun, immediacy, and interpretability.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction to HeartChat
- 1:12Why bio signals in chat
- 2:38Designing HeartChat app
- 5:09HeartChat modes explained
- 7:02Field study setup
- 9:12Results from user study
- 10:55Empathy and awareness findings
- 12:21Everyday topics and habits
- 13:24Reflection on heart rate data
- 14:04Understanding heart rate modes
- 15:11Implications for design
- 16:39Takeaways and conclusion
- 16:59Q&A session
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