A health-oriented emotion-centred origami-based PSS concept. A product-service system concept aimed to help users manage and reduce their stress more tangibly to improve their health and well-being.

Abstract

Emotions have a fundamental role in the experience, perception, cognition, and development of people (Barrett et al., 2016; Plutchik, 2001). Negative emotions such as stress, if not managed appropriately, may be a risk factor in developing diseases such as dementia, cardiovascular problems, and depression, amongst others (Dum et al., 2016; Sandi et al., 2001). This interdisciplinary research presents OrigamEase, a health-oriented emotion-centred origami-based PSS concept to help adults manage their stress more tangibly, in response to its main research question: How can engineering design research contribute to improving people’s emotional health and wellbeing? OrigamEase was designed throughout this research, and its design and testing served to develop a health & well-being oriented, emotion-centred engineering design methodology (HWOEED). Therefore, the design of this methodology is the result of the structuring and ordering of the developmental process of exploring, conducting and streamlining the research, design and testing of OrigamEase.

The design of OrigamEase (both the product and the service part) is based on the cognitive research stream of emotions and stress. Therefore, this research also aims to broaden the knowledge about the implications and management of the emotional experience of stress from an engineering and design point of view, complementing the available solutions for stress management through a structured, measurable, and tangible tool. The HWOEED methodology is influenced by Kansei Engineering and Design Thinking methodologies and integrates various engineering design research methods. However, this methodology proposes a different application of the integration of emotional considerations into engineering design processes., it seeks to improve the emotional experience of users to preserve and promote their health and well-being through specifically designed products, services or PSS. Therefore, these designs become the means and not the end of the engineering design efforts. Also, this methodology can be transferrable to other engineering design solutions.

OrigamEase was tested with 114 adults between 18 and 70 years old through three pilot tests (n=43) and six trial tests (n=71) using a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design. Then the results from these tests were contrasted with two control tests (n=22). The results show that using OrigamEase reduced the measured stress levels of participants (self-reported, heart rate and electrodermal activity) significantly, supporting the experiment hypothesis. Stress levels were recorded before and after using OrigamEase; then, a repeated-measures t-test was applied to find if these differences were significant or not. After using OrigamEase, 73.2% of participants reported feeling less stressed (mean reduction=13.94%), 85.5% experienced a reduction in their heart rate (mean reduction=9.8 bpm), and 78.9% had a lower electrodermal activity (mean reduction= 10.8 points). The testing of OrigamEase served as an initial application validation of the HWOEED methodology.

This research demonstrates that engineering and design fields not only can but need to contribute to research on emotions through interdisciplinary research. Emotions are a fundamental part of all human experiences, impacting a person’s health and well-being profoundly.