Warning: get_browser() [function.get-browser]: browscap ini directive not set in /home/corne41/public_html/projects/aurora/header.php on line 20
banner

Home

Numerous studies have expounded on the benefits of social support for health, demonstrating improvements in overall quality of life, reductions in anxiety, reductions in perceived pain, increased comfort, and even faster recovery times. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to extensive social support networks or socially supportive therapy groups, and even those who do frequently don't have access when they need it most, such as when sitting in a waiting room or lying in bed awake late at night. To that end, we have created Aurora, a mobile phone-based application that allows patients to quickly and easily share their current mood and emotions with one another. Users select photos that they feel represent their current emotional state, and can likewise view the current emotional state of their peers. Aurora supports a range of forms of communication designed to help each user balance their own privacy with their desire for social interaction, and encourages them to reach out to one another in times of need or maintain distance as appropriate. Users can play games with one another that test their perceptions of the images selected by others, adding depth to the level of engagement and interactivity. This rich interaction, centered on the sharing of emotion, should help a greater number people reap more of the benefits of quality social support. Further, the emotions each patient records in the system on a daily basis represent new and highly frequent data points that can be evaluated by care providers and researchers, and the monitoring of patient emotions on a daily basis could help stave off many potential problems before they arise fully.