How might we measure the effectiveness of our facilitation with actual data?
How might we track stress?
Hypothesis
Spire is unobtrusive, easy-to-use, and provides useful, timely stress data.
Design
I'll wear a Spire during business hours (more or less) for six days (in theory, one charge and also covers the weekend trip I'm about to take), and I'll capture what I learn here.
Metrics
I'll do a qualitative analysis based on my answers to the following questions:
How obtrusive was it?
How easy was it to use?
What did you learn?
Learnings
How obtrusive was it?
Surprisingly unobtrusive. For the most part, I forgot about it. I forgot it going through security at the airport, I forgot to take it off my pants. Apparently, it's washing machine proof, which is good, because I could easily see me mistakenly putting it in the wash.
For some reason, it was a bit obtrusive with one particular pair of shorts, but not overly so, and I'm sure I could have adjusted it.
How easy was it to use?
Very. Didn't have any connection issues, battery life is great, charging is easy, app is more or less straightforward.
What did you learn?
When I'm talking to folks, my breathing tends to be tense
When I'm on my computer or phone, my breathing tends to be focused
I am incredibly sedentary in my day-to-day
The vibrating feature is great, because I have greater self-awareness about my tense breathing, which enables me to make adjustments
I can definitely see myself using this for self-care experiments. I'd like to do some longer-term tracking to see if I can detect / validate patterns, then start setting some targets based on that.
I'm not sure yet whether or not this might be useful for my original intention, which is to provide real-time data for meeting facilitation, but it's still worth experimenting
Decisions
Do a followup experiment where I track more data and analyze for patterns. Potentially build a dashboard as part of this.
Do a followup experiment with one other person where we compare our data and analyze for patterns.
Eventually do a followup experiment where we start using these more intentionally for meetings.
