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Empathy and Pain

Made by Laura Rodriguez

Pain Garden is a paired connected zen garden that relay the experiences of people with chronic pain to their family or friends. The feedback interactions that occur between Pain Gardens bring into question the way we view and interpret reactions from others.

Created: February 4th, 2019

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Intention

The idea to design a tangible object that captured and passed on the experiences people have with chronic pain was inspired by research I am currently performing for a project. I have found in my research that people with chronic pain tend to avoid talking about their pain with their family and friends for varying reasons, including seeing no purpose or desire to avoid past reactions they have experienced, such as sympathy, which they tend to view as pity.

I thought it would be interesting to take the question of reactions and how we interpret them and design around that theme. I wanted to explore how connected objects could bring into question the unknown that reactions have when we perceive them based on our personal emotions and perceptions of these reactions. I was interested in exploring a new medium to symbolize and describe pain that was not dialogue based, which is the common method of communicating about chronic pain. In addition, I wanted to explore the idea of “collecting” pain in a metaphoric sense through gesture and the concept of rituals and self-care. 

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Prototype

I designed Pain Garden, a paired zen garden that would be used between an individual with chronic pain and a family member or friend. The connected devices would react to one another through light interactions to indicate what actions the other person has performed on their zen garden. 

When the patient places rocks, which represent the pain, on their zen garden, the family member’s zen garden would light up in the same area. If the family member places a rock on the lit up area, it would turn off their light and then the same area on the patient’s zen garden would turn on.

The video below illustrates the interaction between the paired devices. 

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I created a wizard-of-oz demonstration using two breadboards. One that I wired with a photon cell, LED, and Particle Photon to simulate the interaction when the family member places the rock to cover the pain (light). Then I wired 9 LEDs to a battery source to represent the other pain (light). For the video demonstration, I rewired the breadboard with 1 LED to the battery source to simulate the patient’s zen garden lighting up. I made the boxes out of foam core to encase the wiring and used clear plastic as the base so the LEDs would shine through to light up the sand. 

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/*
 * Project Project1_RME_Pain
 * Description: Zen Pain Garden
 * Author: Laura Rodriguez
 * Date: 2/7/19
 */
 // variables
 int ledPin = D0;  // LED Pin mapping

 int photoPin = A0; // Photocell Pin Mapping

 int photoReading = 0; // Reading from the Photocell

 bool isBoxOpen = false; // A value to store if the box is open or closed

// setup() runs once, when the device is first turned on.
void setup() {
  // Put initialization like pinMode and begin functions here.

    pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);

    Particle.variable( "light", photoReading );

    Particle.function("activate", handleActivation );

    Particle.publish( "eventName" );

    for( int i = 0; i < 3; i++ ){
      digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
      delay(2000);
      digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
      delay(2000);
    }

}

// loop() runs over and over again, as quickly as it can execute.
void loop() {
  // The core of your code will likely live here.

  photoReading = analogRead(photoPin);

  // our box is open...
  if( photoReading >= 2500 ){

	 // if the box just opened
	 // then signal it's changed
	 if( isBoxOpen == false ){
		 isBoxOpen = true;
		 Particle.publish( "box-opened" );

     for( int i = 0; i < 3; i++ ){
       digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
       delay(2000);
       digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
       delay(2000);
     }
	 }

  }else{

	 if( isBoxOpen == true ){
		 Particle.publish( "box-closed" );
	 }
	 isBoxOpen = false;
  }

  delay( 100 );

}

int handleActivation( String command ){

  for( int i = 0; i < 3; i++ ){
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
    delay(100);
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
    delay(100);
  }

  return 1;

}
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Precedents

For this project, I was inspired by the Empathy Amulet and Empathy Box by Sophia Brueckner. I found these projects inspirational because they made me think about the use of sensory elements as a method of connection and communicating the concept and feeling of empathy between two people. The deliberate action that is part of these projects was interesting to me and I thought successfully in making people think about engagement and the purpose of the designed engagement. When I was designing the Pain Garden, I looked at how I could incorporate the concept of deliberate interaction to direct the user and emphasize the larger question I was exploring.

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Process

When I started on this project, I was interested in the idea of designing an object that would allow an individual with chronic pain to allow their family member or friend to experience the pain. So I began by looking at how could I design a wearable device that would allow the individual with chronic pain to relay the frequency of the pain they experience in real-time to the other user. However, following more research that I performed for my other project, I discovered that a lot of people who experience chronic pain, in theory, thought that experiencing the pain would allow others to understand better, but they didn’t actually want to inflict pain on others. So I shifted to looking at the idea of reactions and why people tend to not communicate about their pain with family and friends.

Also, I moved away from a wearable device because I felt there is a strong cognitive connection to health data with wearable devices, which feels very medical. Because I was looking at emotional reactions and perception I wanted to explore designing an object that incorporated the concept of ritual in it, which I feel can hold a very strong mental and emotional connection. 

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Open Questions and Challenges

The main question I was interested in for this project was less about the question of collecting experiences and more about the question of what happens when we share those experiences with others, who have not experienced it in the same way. Especially when looking at chronic pain, which is a very individual experience, I think that this project brings up the question of interpretation and misunderstanding. When thinking about the sequence and interactions I designed with the rocks turning on and off the lights of the paired zen gardens, what comes to mind is what state of mind does the user perform the act with and how would the other perceive that action.

For example, the family member may cover the light for various reasons and states of mind, such as (1) the light is annoying them; (2) they are trying to cover the patient’s pain for them; (3) they are acknowledging the presences of the patient's pain. While the patient may interpret the lighting up reaction from the family member covering the light from many different ways, such as (1) the family member is ignoring their pain; or (2) the family member is acknowledging the presences of their pain. But the question that arises is how would they know what the other is thinking when they are performing that action. I think this disconnection between action/gesture and user perception, especially between two separate people in different location, is something that will be important to think about as we continue to think about the concept of memory and experience. 

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Reflection

I found this project fun to work through. I think that looking at the large questions that can come up when looking at sharing memories and experiences, especially the ones that we may not normally think about in our day-to-day lives. I think that perception and reaction was an interesting topic to reflect on during this project because it has made me think more about the multitude of possibilities that we never consider our actions can cause. Also when we are designing, as designers I think we always tend to think about the most positive and optimal outcome and reaction, so the experience going through this project has got me thinking about other projects I am working on and how the experiences I am designing could be misinterpreted from the desired interpretation that I want. In addition, I learned some new technical skills including wiring the LEDs. I am help with the outcome I produced. I think that I was able to work around my lack of technical skills in developing an outcome that demonstrated what I was imagining with my design and to a fidelity that I desired for this quick project. I think for the next projects I would like to produce results and prototypes that people can interact with in real-time. 

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Pain Garden is a paired connected zen garden that relay the experiences of people with chronic pain to their family or friends. The feedback interactions that occur between Pain Gardens bring into question the way we view and interpret reactions from others.