Designing for Self-Tracking of Emotion and Experience with Tangible Modality

Self-tracking technologies have been developed to understand the self. Emotions are critical to understanding one's daily life; however, tracking the emotion is challenging due to the implicit form of data. In this paper, we introduce MindTracker, an approach for tracking emotion through a tangible interaction with plasticine clay. We explored the benefits and challenges of MindTracker via a two-week data collection study with 16 college students as well as via interviews with three clinical mental health experts. MindTracker is designed for users to craft a form that represents emotion using clay and to describe the experience that evokes the emotion using a diary. We found that the tangible modality of MindTracker motivated the participants to express various aspects of emotions. In addition, MindTracker's data collection and reflection process could have therapeutic properties, such as expressive therapy, self-soothing, and emotional self-regulation. We conclude this paper by discussing the design features of emotion-tracking tools and opportunities to use MindTracker to promote mental health.