antidotes for bruised creatives started from the observation that creatives often ignore their mental and emotional wellbeing due to the unhealthy practices and nature of the job. burnout is a common consequence of this. this project is an exploration of subconscious ways to track a creative's emotional wellbeing using visual and progress tracking.

this project is semi-personal i guess. i'm not one to get mentally affected by burnout, but i feel like it shows it my creative work and my concentration levels. true to what i found through research, not being able to prevent burnout was a common problem among creatives. burnout develops from stage to stage, and if the symptoms are spotted earlier on, it is easier to implement preventive measures against it.

to start off this research as a fellow sufferer of burnout, i observed my own working habits. my hypothesis was that there would be physical signs a person would display that can be related to escalating symptoms of burnout.

i listed some actions that can be linked to the symptoms displayed during the stages which are 'stressor' and 'emotional exhaustion', specifically, actions that are often displayed when the creative is working. this was derived from the observation that creatives lose track of time and themselves when they are working, and don't really know when they should take a break or take too many breaks (me lol). i wanted the project to be sort of a positive interuption into the creative's working practice when it senses that the individual's emotional levels are too intense.

initially, i tried focusing on all emotions (extremely silly of me to think i can achieve that) i ran out of time and energy. so this project focuses on identifying two emotions: anger/ frustration and hopelessness. these emotions were decided on through an observational study. (discussed in the next section)

my own experiences with these emotions were that i often expressed it through sighing and just simply giving up ! :) hopelessness was often expressed through stoning at my work space for a bit, sighing everytime i tried to continue with my work again. frustration was expressed through walking to somewhere else. if i had a friend around me, i would disturb them to relax my mind a bit (bless the victims of my yapping). my hypothesis is that these were universal ways of expressing these emotions, and i could use it to analyse how intense these emotions are felt by the creative. if these emotions are expressed in high levels, there is a higher possibility that the person is burnt out.

this was just my hypothesis for now, however, and emotions might not be expressed the same way in different people. this was how i concluded that i needed more evidence before i designed a system to collect and relief these stressful emotions.

there is an understanding that not everyone will show off their emotions the same way. the project wants to test the hypothesis that interactions can be used to measure signs of burnout in the form of emotions. in order to gather a list of actions that can be linked back to emotions, a simple observational study was conducted to test similar or contrasting habits while working.

the constants of this study would be that all participants are students, to be doing creative work during the observation. all observations were made in the same duration span of two 5 hour sessions. to ensure that the participants would be comfortable in the environment they were working in, the study would be conducted by getting participants to inform me whenever they were feeling significant mood changes, or checking on the participants’ emotions whenever a significant action is subconsciously performed.

there are limitations of this observational study, which make the results of it not scientifically reliable. there is no control over the participant’s understanding of their own emotions. there is also no way of establishing temporality with the participants. as there are no actual methods developed to understand the participants, the ability to infer cause and effect is limited. the action might not be performed because the participants are feeling a certain way as hoped.

the values are also used in determining which actions are more significant in helping to identify one’s emotions. actions which are common in both burnt out and non-burnt out participants with low difference in average Y and N values do not help in deciding whether one is burnt out or not. following the results, sighing, complaining, walking around, and scrolling through one’s mobile phone might help with the identification of burnout. these are actions with high average Y values and low average N values.

however, there were also anomalies in the results. out of the seven burnt out participants, three displayed the action that was walking around. after the feedback session, i deduced that walking around might not be a common thing that people who are burnt out do, and instead, is probably due to the individuals’ own energy levels. two of the participants had stated that they often feel restless while working on their projects, and that they indeed have higher energy levels in comparison to their peers.

during the observation, i realised that there were significant sitting positions which led the participants to feel certain emotions. one of which was that they tended to switch into a more slouched position whenever they were taking breaks, or on their phone. although the positions seemed to be different for everyone, this seemed to be a significant action that coincided with the participants’ emotions. i got some feedback after the study, and the participants had agreed that change in sitting positions are often a sign of changes in motivation levels. scrolling of the phone did show lack of motivation as well, but phones were sometimes necessary in the creative process. phone scrolling was not a reliable way of motivation level measurement.

it was quite sad. i was more excited to create an artefact that was able to measure motivation levels because it was personally more applicable to me. through my results, i realised motivational levels were measured through a large variety of ways and it was very hard to translate this into numbers.

exhaustion, frustration, and hopelessness levels were the most straightforward to translate, because the ways they are expressed were common. perhaps if this project was on a larger scale, i would be able to proceed with measuring emotional motivational levels. but at this point my own motivational levels were decreasing and this is difficult to analyse alone :(

i constantly questioned myself if i was going the right way during this stage but it was quite comforting to realise that professional burnout measurement tools were created through similar methods.

there were too many stages of this project, and i found myself having trouble trying to explain it to peole who are hearing this for the first time. i think part of it has to do with me being bad at explaining things verbally. anyways i created a little stage model of my project to help with understanding it.

translating the interactions into visuals was an important second part of my project, because it ties theories of visual and progress tracking into the practice. visual and progress tracking helps encourage habit formation. helping creatives incorporate better mindfulness practices is an important part of my project.

this research aims to innovate ways of helping individuals identify that they are getting overwhelmed by these factors, prompting them to take some action on improving their wellbeing before it goes further out of their control.

with the making process in mind, i came up with two artefacts that would be able to collect the act of sighing. both had their pros and cons. the first one would be worn on the user's neck. it is able to collect the user's subconscious behaviour which is sighing, but it might be uncomfortable, and i foresee issues differentiating the act of sighing from other sounds. the second artefact requires a motion detector. i don't foresee unwanted data being collected, but this artefact requires the user to purposefully sigh into it, defeating the purpose of my project.

during the observational study, i realised the participants liked to whine and complain a lot to express their frustrations on the projects, people, etc. this artefact is designed to pick up on loud sounds of complaining. i decided it would be nice to have a responsive and familiar element to it, helping to lower frustration levels at the same time.