A proposal and rough prototype for Project Canari, a means of measuring and coping with stress in modern urban settings through interconnected empathy. This was a team project for Design Planning and 192021.org at the IIT Institute of Design.

1. stress
city
in the
Joe Gray, Qijing Huang, Dania Peterson, Nikki Pfarr, Peter Zapf | Design Planning | Fall 2008

2. Megacities = MegasYsteMs
Urban growth creates megacities with
massive problems…huge opportunities.
By 2007 3.3 billion people—more than half of the world’s
population—will be living in cities. The total may even
reach 60% by 2030. Such rapidly increasing urbanization,
particularly in developing countries, creates many
opportunities and challenges for individuals, businesses, and
governments.
The largest of these urban centers are called Megacities.
According to planetearth®, Earth Sciences for Society,
Megacities are more than just large cities. Their scale creates
new dynamics, new complexity, and a new simultaneity
of events and processes. Comprised of a multitude of
interconnected systems, Megacities also host intense and
complex interactions between different demographic, social,
political, economic, biological and ecological processes.
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3. Megacities = Megastress
stress in megacities is difficult to define and
measure. Yet, it puts us all at risk.
Eons of evolution have given us a robust set of biological
systems allowing humans to adapt to environmental stresses
environmental Demands
better than any other species on Earth. Yet prior generations
(stressors or life events)
could never have imagined today's rate of change and the
increasing complexity of the world in which we now live.
appraisal of Demands and Stress occurs when environmental demands tax or exceed
adaptive capacities the adaptive capacity of a system, resulting in physical,
psychological, and biological changes that may place persons
at risk or negatively influence quality of life. The megacities are
Percieved stress Benign appraisal
full of stimuli that may induce stress, including: transportation
systems, ambient noise, super-saturated messaging channels,
Negative emotional responses high population density.
Though stress is considered a contributing factor in roughly
Physiological or Behavioral responses 50% of deaths, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control,
it is difficult to define, elusive to measure, and ultimately
complicated to visualize. Mental and emotional stress increase
increased risk of increased risk of as cities grow, modernize, and become more populous, yet we
Physical Disease Psychiatric Disease have no wide-scale systemic understanding of stress factors on
the individual and society.
Source: Strategies for Measuring Stress in Studies of Psychiatric and Physical Disorders
by Cohen, Kessler, and Gordon. 3

4. DeFiNiNg PrOBLeM
We can’t fix what we can’t see.
Visualizing stress is the first step in finding
a solution to this urban crisis.
A person under stress displays few overt cues of their
condition. Perhaps their hand is clutching and rubbing the
back of their neck. Maybe their brow is furrowed and filled
86% a few beads of perspiration. Is their heart racing? Given the
subtleness of these indicators (and our best efforts to appear
45% in control), even the most self-aware and empathic of us
78% will have difficulty in detecting whether someone, ourselves
included, is feeling stressed.
And because we can’t fix what we don’t understand, it
is vital that stress be visualized in a simple, easy-to-
comprehend manner. Such a display would provide an
increased awareness of our own stress, enabling us to better
understand, manage, and prevent it.
5

5. OUr cONcePt
canari is stress visualized.
We propose that a means of measuring and visualizing
stress through space and over time will assist individuals,
social groups, and the public and private sectors with better
understanding and ameliorating stress in the urban setting.
Our concept collects bio-feedback data in conjunction with
GPS coordinates, then aggregates and visualizes this data,
providing context, stress status, and potential empathetic
responses for the individual user on a one-to-one, one-to-
some, and one-to-many basis.
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6. ONe tO ONe
improved consumer experience
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canari: a tool for individuals
serv n&
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su bscr With Canari, measuring stress is as simple as carrying on
Canari Control Panel
a conversation. As a freeware application for GPS-enabled
smartphones, Canari collects and analyzes data on the user's
voice patterns (e.g. amplitude, frequency, and cadence) along
Stressed
with concurrent ambient noise to produce a visualization of
stress level relative to personalized preset norms. Using GPS,
stress levels are correlated with location and movement.
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Canari users thus benefit from a real-time, location-based
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and real-time mapping
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representation of their stress level, allowing them to better
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understand, manage, and prevent their symptoms accordingly.
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In addition, users can allow their personal network of family,
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Canari users thus benefit from unprecedented interconnected
empathy and stress care.
Canari
Canari users can access and track their personal stress data online.
Adapted from b2b.
9

7. ONe tO sOMe
improved customer experience
data
free
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canari: a tool for businesses
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The Canari platform is a robust analytic tool and
communication channel for stress-related products and
services. Stress data from Canari end-users is masked for
anonymity and aggregated in a centralized database. Through
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subscription-based services including real-time stress
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visualization dashboards, business clients can better tailor
and real-time mapping
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product and service offerings to end-user scenarios.
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For example, a spa franchise could subscribe to the database
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as a means of pinpointing high-stress urban locations
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where people are most likely to purchase their services.
A pharmaceutical company could use the database to
determine where to test-market and promote stress-relieving
drugs. Further, businesses could benefit from pushing
communications to end-users tailored to their stress level
and location.
Businesses can send promotions to Canari users’ smartphones.
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8. ONe tO MaNY
improved consumer experience
data
free
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erat
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agg nd acti
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canari: a tool for government and city Planners
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Visualizing real-time stress data will revolutionize the way
cities are planned, serviced, and governed. By correlating
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real-time encrypted and anonymous end-user stress data
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with situational data, city governments can better understand
and real-time mapping
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the relationships between urban infrastructure and the
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human condition.
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Traffic conditions, health data, geodemographics, and crime
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data can be overlaid with real-time stress visualization to
better manage city planning, social services, and public
health and safety in accordance with the stress of a given
population. The Canari platform offers an array of data
synthesis and visualization services that makes real-time
stress monitoring and management possible.
Stress maps visually depict locations of peak stress within a megacity.
Source: Christian Nold, Biomapping.net
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9. HOW aND WHY
canari rollout Phase I Phase Ii Phase III
Key functions
Individual stress Network with friends, family, Affiliation with
and features
monitoring and awareness doctors , stress experts empathy providers
Track voice stress, ambient Introduce additional
noise, and GPS via cell phones sensors and technologies
Users do self-directed search for Users pull stress relief Push customized stress relief
stress relief suggestions suggestions from provided set suggestions to users
Develop data aggregation Provide aggregated
and analysis tools data to third parties
Key brand and
marketing Introduce Canari brand via Co-branded sensors and
icon system, website technologies Co-branded services
Word-of-mouth campaign
to generate buzz
PR campaign emphasizing
medical benefits
Advertising
campaigns
How canari will take flight.
Sales Service available to Additional features available to
individuals as freeware individuals via subscription
Selling aggregated data to
third parties
Rollout of the Canari platform will occur over three phases. Once a sufficient cross-section of consumers have adopted
Connecting empathy providers Four streams of development are key to the successful launch Canari, businesses and government entities will benefit from
with targeted individuals
of the concept and its managed growth. We imagine avid a representative visualization of population stress.
user of smartphones to be early adopters of Canari because What makes Canaris remarkable is its ability to make
Account executives for they are more likely to be: working more; earning more; tangible an internalized feeling. According to leading experts
Talent
Deal makers public and private sectors consuming more, especially information/news likely to like the Mayo Clinic, not a day in your life goes by without
increase overall stress levels; sharing the applications they encountering a situation or event that may trigger stress. And
Programmers, Data Data aggregators, “discover.” Such potential Canari users are also more likely to that’s OK. Some acute stress spurs action or provides thrills
visualizers, Designers Data analysts be aware of the need to ameliorate stress, but lack the means that make aspects of life exhilarating. However, stress that
to do so effectively. becomes chronic is a problem that needs to addressed. By
Canari, and its platform of interconnected empathy, allows identifying and understanding the sources of stress, people
Lawyers Stress experts
people to make a simple, but often difficult, request - “Help me.” learn to better manage it.
15

10. cHaLLeNges
getting people to take it easy won’t be all
that easy.
According to the September 2008 issue of Scientific
American, public sharing of private lives has led to a
rethinking of our current conceptions of privacy. Yet even
with growing numbers of people Twittering life’s minutia, we
recognize users’ heightened sensitivity when their health is
involved. Fortunately, people are gaining effective tools to
control what personal information they want to give out
and to whom.
Canari will employ concepts such as anonymous
authorization and degrees of disclosure to ensure as much
privacy as possible. We will explore the safeguards HIPAA
and other privacy regulations can provide. Ultimately, in
order to remove perceived barriers and enable rapid and
robust adoption, Canari must be both trusted and valued
by its users. Given that, we must remain vigilant against
intrusions and unauthorized access to any personal
information, ranging from rogue individuals and the the
misuse by governing bodies.
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11. FUtUre eXteNsiONs
88%
every system has a stress threshold beyond
which it fails.
such systems to mobilize others and engage local, state,
Just as every species is comprised of systems, the world national, and international governments.
is also a collection of systems: environmental, energy, In the grandest sense, interconnected empathy of all systems,
transportation, financial, sanitation, etc. Most, if not all, are as conceptualized and visualized by Canari, could help
interconnected and co-dependent in some way. We imagine humanity, and the world in which we live, reach systemic
the concept central to Canari—stress visualization—could harmony. A state where complexity is not maddening; it is
be expanded to help visualize the stress of any system. invigorating. A place where we do not cope, but we all live well.
Failure of such mega-systems is not an option, if we want
life to continue and improve. For instance, air and water
quality could be monitored, and the presence of harmful
contaminants could be displayed. Making this information
public, easily accessible, and personally relevant, could
enable individuals and groups dedicated to improving
64%
(i.e., reducing the contributing factors that create stress)
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